Take your teaching online

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Take your teaching online

Take your teaching online

About this free course This version of the content may include video, images and interactive content that may not be optimised for your device. You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University – There you’ll also be able to track your progress via your activity record, which you can use to demonstrate your learning. Copyright © 2017 The Open University Intellectual property Unless otherwise stated, this resource is released under the terms of the Creative Commons Licence v4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_GB. Within that The Open University interprets this licence in the following way: www.open.edu/openlearn/about-openlearn/frequently-asked-questions-on-openlearn. Copyright and rights falling outside the terms of the Creative Commons Licence are retained or controlled by The Open University. Please read the full text before using any of the content. We believe the primary barrier to accessing high-quality educational experiences is cost, which is why we aim to publish as much free content as possible under an open licence. If it proves difficult to release content under our preferred Creative Commons licence (e.g. because we can’t afford or gain the clearances or find suitable alternatives), we will still release the materials for free under a personal end-user licence. This is because the learning experience will always be the same high quality offering and that should always be seen as positive – even if at times the licensing is different to Creative Commons. When using the content you must attribute us (The Open University) (the OU) and any identified author in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Licence. The Acknowledgements section is used to list, amongst other things, third party (Proprietary), licensed content which is not subject to Creative Commons licensing. Proprietary content must be used (retained) intact and in context to the content at all times. The Acknowledgements section is also used to bring to your attention any other Special Restrictions which may apply to the content. For example there may be times when the Creative Commons Non-Commercial Sharealike licence does not apply to any of the content even if owned by us (The Open University). In these instances, unless stated otherwise, the content may be used for personal and non-commercial use. We have also identified as Proprietary other material included in the content which is not subject to Creative Commons Licence. These are OU logos, trading names and may extend to certain photographic and video images and sound recordings and any other material as may be brought to your attention. Unauthorised use of any of the content may constitute a breach of the terms and conditions and/or intellectual property laws. We reserve the right to alter, amend or bring to an end any terms and conditions provided here without notice.

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Contents Introduction and guidance Introduction and guidance What is a badged course? How to get a badge Week 1: Teaching online is different Introduction 1 Synchronous and asynchronous modes of teaching 1.1 Teacher reflections 1.2 Making use of asynchronous and synchronous online teaching opportunities 1.3 Interacting with students 1.4 Motivation, support and discipline 1.5 Developing skills and confidence 2 Blended learning 2.1 Flipped classrooms 3 Learner anonymity, backchannels and social interactions 4 This week’s quiz Summary Week 2: Discovering the connections: principles and theories for understanding digital tools Introduction 1 Principles of effective online teaching 1.1 Create a schedule 1.2 Keep learners informed 1.3 Foster a sense of community 1.4 Ask for feedback

1.5 Recognise diversity 2 How can educational theories help you take your teaching online? 2.1 Behaviourism 2.2 Cognitivism 2.3 Constructivism 2.4 Connectivism 3 Digital technologies for online teaching 3.1 Course management 3.2 Content creation tools 3.3 Networking and collaboration tools 3.4 Enhancing tools and materials you already use 4 Learning objects 5 This week’s quiz Summary Week 3: Selecting technologies: what to look for and how to choose Introduction 1 Technologies for content creation 1.1 Repurposing and extending slide presentations 1.2 Screencasting 1.3 Low-tech, low-complexity video recording 1.4 Image manipulation 1.5 Small interactive tools with big impact 1.6 E-learning development tools 1.7 Web conferencing platforms 1.8 RSS feeds and aggregators 1.9 Plagiarism detection 2 Personalisation with tools for learning

2.1 Serving diverse audiences 2.2 Giving control to learners 3 Technologies for social communication 3.1 Social technologies for promoting community 3.2 Social technologies for enhancing presence 4 Dealing with change in the technology sector 5 How to choose 5.1 Linking learning outcomes, activities and tools 6 This week’s quiz Summary Week 4: The benefits of support networks and how to develop them Introduction 1 Benefits of engaging with online networks 1.1 Sharing ideas 1.2 Developing partnerships and communities 1.3 Sharing information 1.4 Professional development 1.5 Making contacts 2 Communities of practice and network weather 2.1 Communities of practice 2.2 Network weather 3 Developing your networks 4 This week’s quiz Summary Week 5: Finding, using, and sharing educational materials online Introduction 1 Open Education Resources 1.1 What are Open Education Resources?

1.2 Why should I be interested in OER? 2 Evaluating the licensing and quality of online resources 2.1 Copyright and the role for Creative Commons licences 2.2 Evaluating open resources 2.3 Licensing your own materials 3 Finding resources online 3.1 OER repositories 4 This week’s quiz Summary Week 6: Supporting learners with different needs – accessibility in online teaching Introduction 1 What is assistive technology? 1.1 Types of assistive technology 2 Making your online materials accessible 2.1 Ensuring clarity of navigation and appearance 2.2 Making visual elements accessible 2.3 Making auditory elements accessible 2.4 Making display elements adjustable 2.5 Ensuring tasks can be completed without needing manual dexterity or visual acuity 3 Checking the accessibility of materials 4 Alternative formats 5 This week’s quiz Summary Week 7: Making a change in your teaching Introduction 1 Changing the technology or the pedagogy?

1.1 Visitors and Residents 2 Learning design 3 Making the change 3.1 Hints and tips 4 Analysing your practice and scope for change 5 This week’s quiz Summary Week 8: Evaluating changes and enhancing practice Introduction 1 Learning analytics 2 Feedback and reflection 2.1 Eliciting feedback 2.2 Understanding feedback 2.3 Reflection 3 Action research 4 Review, modify, repeat! 5 Week 8 Quiz Conclusion Tell us what you think Your notes References Acknowledgements

Introduction and guidance

Introduction and guidance Welcome to this badged open course, Take your teaching online. The free course lasts eight weeks, with approximately three hours of study each week. You can work through the course at your own pace, so if you have more time one week there is no problem with pushing on to complete another week’s study. Online learning has rapidly emerged and is now found in every area of education, from schools to skills training. More people than ever learn through online courses. Even where teaching is primarily ‘face to face’, online tools and interactions have become a key part of the learning experience. But teaching online is different. If you work in education or training at any level, you need to develop new skills and understanding in order to make the right decisions, make the most of the opportunities, and overcome common challenges. It is almost 20 years since The Open University trialled our first fully online course with our students. We are now world leaders in the research and delivery of online education. In this free course, we share the fundamental knowledge needed to deliver effective teaching online. You will hear about the experiences of real educators, be introduced to cutting edge research, and understand the ideas and tools that shape how we teach and learn online. You will also learn useful methods that will guide you to test out these new ideas in your own practice. After completing this course, you should be able to Identify the differences between teaching online and teaching in a face-to-face environment. Make informed decisions when choosing new tools and pedagogies for online teaching. Identify major benefits and challenges of teaching online.

Understand the changing practices of educators as they make use of online opportunities such as social networks and open educational resources. Understand how to create and evaluate approaches to online teaching that are appropriate for you.

Moving around the course In the ‘Summary’ at the end of each week, you can find a link to the next week. If at any time you want to return to the start of the course, click on ‘Course content’. From here you can navigate to any part of the course. Alternatively, use the week links at the top of every page of the course. It’s also good practice, if you access a link from within a course page (including links to the quizzes), to open it in a new window or tab. That way you can easily return to where you’ve come from without having to use the back button on your browser. Activities and storing your answers Throughout Take your teaching online you will be presented with activities which are designed to develop your understanding of the topics and give you the tools for study or work beyond the course. The activities often require you to provide answers, responses or comments in a text box which are then stored within the course itself, only viewable by you. To make the most of the course we also advise that you store your answers together elsewhere (perhaps in a Word document) for ease of access after you have completed the course. We recommend that you transfer the answers to your own journal as you complete each week of study. All your answers to activities are also collated in Your notes at the end of Week 8.

What is a badged course? While studying Take your teaching online you have the option to work towards gaining a digital badge. Badged courses are a key part of The Open University’s mission to promote the educational well-being of the community. The courses also provide another way of helping you to progress from informal to formal learning. To complete a course you need to be able to find about 24 hours of study time, over a period of about 8 weeks. However, it is possible to study them at any time, and at a pace to suit you. Badged courses are all available on The Open University’s OpenLearn website and do not cost anything to study. They differ from Open University courses because you do not receive support from a tutor. But you do get useful feedback from the interactive quizzes.

What is a badge? Digital badges are a new way of demonstrating online that you have gained a skill. Schools, colleges and universities are working with employers and other organisations to develop open badges that help learners gain recognition for their skills, and support employers to identify the right candidate for a job. Badges demonstrate your work and achievement on the course. You can share your achievement with friends, family and employers, and on social media. Badges are a great motivation, helping you to reach the end of the course. Gaining a badge often boosts confidence in the skills and abilities that underpin successful study. So, completing this course should encourage you to think about taking other courses.

How to get a badge Getting a badge is straightforward! Here’s what you have to do: read each week of the course score 50% or more in the two badge quizzes in Week 4 and Week 8. For all the quizzes, you can have three attempts at most of the questions (for true or false type questions you usually only get one attempt). If you get the answer right first time you will get more marks than for a correct answer the second or third time. If one of your answers is incorrect you will often receive helpful feedback and suggestions about how to work out the correct answer. For the badge quizzes, if you’re not successful in getting 50% the first time, after 24 hours you can attempt the whole quiz, and come back as many times as you like. We hope that as many people as possible will gain an Open University badge – so you should see getting a badge as an opportunity to reflect on what you have learned rather than as a test. If you need more guidance on getting a badge and what you can do with it, take a look at the OpenLearn FAQs. When you gain your badge you will receive an email to notify you and you will be able to view and manage all your badges in My OpenLearn within 24 hours of completing the criteria to gain a badge. Get started with Week 1.

Week 1: Teaching online is different

Introduction

Figure 1 Same teacher, different tools

View description - Figure 1 Same teacher, different tools Welcome to Take your teaching online! In this first week of the course, we will introduce some of the key differences between teaching online and teaching in a face-to-face environment. These differences mean that teaching online is a substantially different experience to teaching face to face, with a substantially different skillset needed for the teacher. The good news is that most teachers can adapt not only their skills, but also many of their existing teaching materials, to suit an online environment. There are a lot of possibilities, but as a minimum, if you and your students have computers and access to the internet, then you can start to teach and learn online. In this week, you will also meet Rita, our animated colleague who is working her way through this course alongside you. Please allow Rita to introduce herself and to outline what she hopes to get from this course. Video content is not available in this format.

View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

By the end of this week, you should be able to: discuss the main characteristics of online education activities and how these differ from face-to-face teaching begin to determine the kinds of face-to-face teaching activities that might, or might not, transfer successfully to an online environment summarise the elements of online teaching that need a different skillset to face-to-face teaching. The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.

1 Synchronous and asynchronous modes of teaching One of the most common ways to think about teaching online is to consider whether it might be synchronous, asynchronous, or a mixture of both.

Synchronous teaching Synchronous teaching is where the teacher is present at the same time as the learner(s). This is almost always the case in a face-toface environment. Synchronous teaching can also take place via online learning, through the use of video conferencing and live chat or instant messaging. As with the face-to-face environment, the learners in synchronous online teaching can ask questions in real time.

Figure 2 Teaching where learners are present at the same time is called synchronous teaching

View description - Figure 2 Teaching where learners are present at the same time is called synchronous ... If a course is delivered entirely through synchronous teaching, face to face or online, this can limit flexibility for learners. Because of the need for everyone to be present at the same time (even if online), all students must work through the course at a similar pace, allowing only minimal flexibility in scheduling. As everyone needs to be online

together, if a learner is not available for a lesson, they miss it (although some learning organisations will record lessons for these students to view later). The teacher’s role in online synchronous teaching might not be so very different from their role in the face-to-face environment. Synchronous learning may feature webinars (live online lessons), group chats, or drop-in sessions where teachers are available to help at a particular time. However, teaching synchronously online will require some new skills to be developed, for example in managing the faster pace of this form of teaching.

Asynchronous online teaching Asynchronous online teaching is where teaching materials are posted online, and learners work through them in their own time, communicating with each other and the teacher via discussion boards or forums, or even by email. Good asynchronous teaching will include a variety of media, including (but not limited to) audio and video clips. With an asynchronous mode of teaching, the learner can work at their own pace and at times of day which are convenient for them. The teacher may find that the pattern of their input is very different from the synchronous environment, with many shorter visits to the discussion boards or forums being more valuable to the learners than one single, longer session. There may still be deadlines for work to be submitted for feedback, and there may be a recommended schedule for students to follow so that they have some idea of what they should be doing and when. As you will discover later in this week, a ‘blended’ approach can help teachers to bring together the advantages of synchronous and asynchronous teaching, and of online and face-to-face teaching, into a single experience.

The importance of collaboration Collaboration between students, and between students and teachers, is an important factor in both synchronous and asynchronous online teaching, helping to create a sense of connection between all participants and to build a sense of community and shared purpose. Collaboration in a synchronous environment can be achieved in much the same way as in a face-to face-classroom, with discussions and group tasks. In the asynchronous environment, collaboration can be trickier but is still very important in reducing the sense of isolation learners may feel when working online. Discussions and group tasks can work just as well asynchronously as synchronously. Indeed, because of the lack of time constraints, learners can spend time composing a quality response when contributing to an asynchronous online discussion.

1.1 Teacher reflections Every week we will present video clips made at home by teachers who have moved their teaching online. This provides you with a real world experience related to each week’s material. At the same time, this also highlights how simple video clips can be produced and used for online teaching purposes. This week we have a clip from a teacher named Sarah S. Her experiences reflect a few of the concepts we introduce this week and will discuss further in the weeks to come: Video content is not available in this format. View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

1.2 Making use of asynchronous and synchronous online teaching opportunities Throughout this course you’ll be introduced to research papers relating to the topics discussed. The first such paper, by Murphy, Rodriguez-Manzanares and Barbour (2011), reports on interviews with 42 Canadian high school distance education teachers regarding their views on synchronous and asynchronous online teaching activities. The authors found that: The teachers used different combinations of synchronous and asynchronous online teaching. Some taught entirely asynchronously. Others combined asynchronous teaching with synchronous forms such as scheduled classes or times where they would be available for tutoring and responding to students. All those interviewed made some use of asynchronous online teaching, such as providing learning materials for students to work through in their own time, use of online quizzes, or supporting students to ask a question via email or forums and receive a response at a later time. Teachers suggested that asynchronous and text forms of communication were preferred by many students. One suggested that it was rare for students to request voice chat rather than text communications, another noted that students could email to ask multiple questions and the teacher could then take some time to construct a response. There were also perceived advantages to synchronous modes of communication. Some teachers felt that addressing a particular problem or query raised by a student would be best achieved through videoconferencing or the use of a shared online whiteboard. It was also felt that opportunities for synchronous online teaching could help the students to feel less isolated, because they could include time for socialising and informal discussion.

Activity 1 Thinking about synchronous and asynchronous online teaching Allow about 10 minutes

Having read this section and watched the video that Sarah S. made about her experiences, think about how synchronous and asynchronous modes of online teaching could be applied to your work. Try to come up with three short examples that fit the following situations. These could be based on your own experiences of teaching or learning, or a situation that you can imagine: 1. A situation where synchronous learning is appropriate and beneficial in supporting learning. 2. A situation where asynchronous learning is appropriate and beneficial in supporting learning. 3. A situation that combines synchronous and asynchronous learning to support learning. Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 1 Thinking about synchronous and asynchronous online teaching

1.3 Interacting with students One of the most noticeable differences between synchronous and asynchronous teaching is the nature of the interactions between teacher and students. Such interactions include providing feedback, answering questions, or guiding students through a particular activity. Focusing on feedback, in a synchronous teaching environment, the teacher can deliver feedback immediately whenever it is required. However, while the face-to-face environment allows for visual cues when delivering feedback, these are not always possible, or may take quite different forms, in the online environment. It is important when teaching online to proactively make opportunities for feedback both from teacher to learner and from learner to teacher, to make up for the loss of the face-to-face cues.

Figure 3 Giving and getting feedback from learners can be achieved both synchronously and asynchronously.

View description - Figure 3 Giving and getting feedback from learners can be achieved both synchronously ...

Feedback in the asynchronous environment will be given some time after a learner has asked a question. So, if several iterations of the conversation are needed to help the learner with their issue, it can take some time to give the feedback. This is one of the reasons why peer feedback is often used in the asynchronous setting, allowing learners to aid each other without having to wait for the next input by the teacher (Gikandi and Morrow, 2016).

1.4 Motivation, support and discipline Keeping learners motivated and attentive online can be much more challenging than in a face-to-face environment where your personal enthusiasm for the subject can readily rub off on the learners. In an online environment, you will likely have learners who are more selfmotivated, learners who are more comfortable with online learning, and learners who are less certain of how to interact. There might be particular challenges for those learners who are less capable of structuring their studies independently.

Figure 4 Learning online provides different challenges from learning in a face-to-face environment

View description - Figure 4 Learning online provides different challenges from learning in a face-to-face ...

It is worth providing a highly structured set of tasks in the opening stages of the course, with discrete outputs, which enable you to see very quickly which learners are completing the tasks on schedule and in the manner that you desire. You can then follow up individually with those who are not engaging in the expected manner and offer advice on how they should approach the tasks and their online learning experience. On the other hand, maintaining control of a class online can be more straightforward than doing so face to face. In the face-to-face classroom, individual learners can disrupt the lesson or distract other learners, but the online environment is different. During synchronous events, you can combine existing classroom skills with the features of the environment (such as the teacher controlling whose microphone is enabled at any given time) to avoid any one learner dominating discussions. In asynchronous discussions, inappropriate or tangential comments can be moderated or, if appropriate, challenged publicly, as with a face-to-face teaching setting. A further difference with respect to discipline in the online learning environment is the possibility for interactions outside of the channels that you are present in. We will talk about the concept of ‘backchannels’ later in this week. When teaching online, educators need to always be aware that interactions may be occurring between learners in places that are out of your reach, and the possibility for bullying, for example, needs to be borne in mind. If a learner is unusually reticent in an online session, or doesn’t post to a discussion thread which you would have expected them to engage in, it can be worth tactfully exploring with the learner (in private, of course) to ascertain what has caused the change in their interaction / behaviour online.

1.5 Developing skills and confidence It is important to note that supporting learners in an online environment requires a different skillset to supporting learners in a face-to-face learning environment. A study by Price et al. (2007) into the differences between learner perceptions of teaching in an online environment and in a face-to-face environment found that the online teacher should have a greater pastoral focus than that of a face-toface teacher, and that often both teachers and learners needed guidance and training in communicating online. Without the ‘comfort’ of a physical classroom environment, learners can feel isolated and unsupported, so an increased pastoral presence by the teacher, initiated via online communications, can help reduce that feeling of isolation and develop a more ‘comfortable’ experience for the learner. A large scale, follow-up study by one of Price’s co-authors (Richardson, 2009), which looked at the experiences of learners receiving tutorial support online or face to face on humanities courses, concluded that with adequate preparation, the online environment need not be a lesser experience for learners in terms of support: ‘Provided that tutors and students receive appropriate training and support, course designers in the humanities can be confident about introducing online forms of tutorial support in campus-based or distance education.’ (pg. 69) If you are moving into the online environment with your teaching, you also need to be aware of the complexities that technology may bring. Whilst it is not usually necessary to become a technical expert, familiarity with the common technical issues your learners may face can be a very useful skillset to develop. If, for example, you can advise on the common techniques to resolve audio issues during synchronous online sessions, you can both save time and stress for learners and build their confidence. Your confidence to approach new technologies and to deal with issues that arise in their usage will grow as you gain experience and this makes teaching online a much more pleasurable experience. So set aside some time to play and familiarise yourself with the tools you expect to use. Also, it is always

worth finding out whether there are training or development opportunities focused on the specific online teaching technologies that you expect to use.

Activity 2 Motivating and engaging students online Allow about 20 minutes

1. Watch this video ‘Engaging and motivating students’ which summarises views from a range of experts on student engagement. 2. As you watch, make notes on useful tips that you would like to incorporate into your own online teaching. Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 2 Motivating and engaging students online

2 Blended learning

Figure 5 There are many facets to online learning

View description - Figure 5 There are many facets to online learning Previously, we introduced the distinctions between asynchronous and synchronous teaching. Another concept that might be very useful to help you understand how to teach online is blended learning. Blended learning usually refers to a course that includes both online and face-to-face elements. A blended approach will usually bring together three core elements: classroom-based activities with the teacher present; online learning materials (which may be used in different ways – as you'll see in the section on ‘flipped learning’); independent study using materials provided by the teacher, either online or in hard copy, to reinforce concepts or develop skills. This blend of activities means that the teacher also has a blend of roles, adding a ‘facilitator’ element to

their role as they organise and direct group activities, both online and offline. Blended learning can help to bring together the main advantages of synchronous learning: teacher presence immediate feedback peer interaction. It can combine these with the main advantages of asynchronous learning: independence flexibility self-pacing. It can help to avoid the pitfalls of asynchronous learning: learner isolation difficulty with motivation.

2.1 Flipped classrooms ‘Flipped classrooms’ utilise the blended learning model to reverse the traditional learning environment such that the learners receive the bulk of the instructional content online. Learners would, for example, be asked to understand and process a set of material in their own time and at their own pace. This would take the place of more traditional post-class ‘homework’ tasks. The classroom sessions are then used for interactive discussion and exploration of the topic with the teacher, which takes the place of the more traditional instructional scenario. Hence the type of activities undertaken in each context is the reverse of what is usual. The class has ‘flipped’ to be the space for students and teachers to be more active, engaging with each other in a more personalised and focused way. The online environment then becomes the home for the more traditional lecture-style teaching.

Activity 3 Thinking about the flipped classroom Allow about 15 minutes

This video synthesises the benefit of a flipped classroom approach. Watch the video and note down three benefits of the flipped classroom over a traditional approach. Video content is not available in this format. View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 3 Thinking about the flipped classroom Now that you’ve been introduced to some of the unique aspects of online teaching, the differences between synchronous and asynchronous elements, the possibilities of blended learning and the notion of the flipped classroom, the next activity prompts you to reflect on your own practice and how it might fit with what you have learned so far.

Activity 4 Starting to build your plans for teaching online Allow about 30 minutes

This activity asks you to reflect upon what it is that you would like to achieve in terms of online teaching. Now that you have read a little about the basics of teaching online, think about what your goals are in this area. You may not have specific goals in mind yet. If you don’t, simply focus on one course that you

teach and consider how it might be moved wholly or partially online. Note down answers to the following questions if you can: 1. What do you want to deliver online? Do you aim to transfer online a small or substantial element of what you currently deliver face to face? Will you move entirely online or create a blended approach? Will you use synchronous or asynchronous activities – or both? Might a flipped classroom approach be appropriate? 2. To whom do you want to deliver the learning experience? What level of experience with online learning is likely amongst your intended learners? What support might your learners need to make a successful transition to online learning? 3. What resources do you already have that you might be able to repurpose for online learning? Record your responses below and, if you wish, in your own journal as you will revisit them later in this course. Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 4 Starting to build your plans for teaching online

3 Learner anonymity, backchannels and social interactions In some online teaching environments, all interactions through ‘official’ channels will be obviously attributable to individual students. Forum posts will usually only be possible from students’ institutional online accounts, and therefore their name will be attached to everything they contribute. Similarly, login information for synchronous online events will usually be provided by the institution and will identify each learner clearly. However, there may be circumstances where this kind of information is not provided by default, and learners can choose to create accounts that do not identify who they are. Such anonymity can have a great advantage for more reticent learners who may be reluctant to contribute under their own name for fear of giving an incorrect answer, for example, and can be very enabling for the entire cohort if discussing very sensitive topics. However, it can also embolden trouble-makers or more dominant personalities, and because of this it can be challenging for the teacher to moderate activities where the interactions are anonymous. As you learned earlier in this week, any online teaching activity carries the possibility of interactions developing between learners in spaces away from the official locations for the online learning. Whilst there can be concerns about the lack of control over these communications between learners, more often they can be exceptionally useful to learners (Fiester and Green, 2016). If students are in touch with each other via an instant messaging app, for example, during a synchronous online learning event, they can often help each other with understanding the issues covered without having to declare in front of the teacher that they need assistance. This can lead to a greater collective advance in learning than would happen if only the official channels were used. It is important to consider how we as educators can encourage and structure effective use of backchannels. One example of

backchannels being used to great effect is the use of Twitter and a dedicated hashtag to synthesise and discuss presentations during a conference (be it online or face to face). This image shows some of the use of the hashtag #H818conf during the H818 Online Conference 2016, an annual event ran as part of one of the modules of the Open University’s MA in Online and Distance Education.

Figure 6 Twitter responses

View description - Figure 6 Twitter responses

4 This week’s quiz Check what you’ve learned this week by taking the end-of-week quiz. Week 1 practice quiz Open the quiz in a new window or tab then come back here when you’re done.

Summary This week you’ve been introduced to some of the core concepts in online teaching. Synchronous and asynchronous activities are a key distinction in teaching online, and deciding which activities or resources should be used synchronously and which asynchronously is one of the fundamental skills any online teacher must develop. Blended learning and flipped classroom techniques could become a fundamental part of thinking for teachers whose classes are divided between a face-to-face element and an online element. We will move on next week to looking at what makes effective online teaching and how education theories can inform how we approach online teaching. Before we move on, however, let’s have a few moments with Rita, to see how she’s getting on. Video content is not available in this format. View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

You can now go to Week 2.

Week 2: Discovering the connections: principles and theories for understanding digital tools

Introduction How do you get started with online teaching? In this week, we will look at some principles that underpin effective online teaching, and how learning theories can inform approaches to teaching. Following this you will be introduced to a categorisation of the technologies used in online teaching. Finally, you will be introduced to the world of learning objects. Pulling all of this together should enable you to start planning what you want to achieve with online teaching.

Teacher reflections This week we have a clip from Leanne, who tells us about some of the tools and concepts she has found useful in her teaching. Video content is not available in this format. View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

By the end of this week, you should be able to: understand some of the essential principles of online teaching be aware of some key learning theories and classifications of online teaching technologies understand the concept of learning objects and some of the different classifications of these.

1 Principles of effective online teaching In Week 1, we introduced some of the ways in which online learning can create new opportunities and benefits for teachers and learners. However, in order to realise those benefits, certain principles need to be followed to optimise the online experience for learners.

Activity 1 Challenging preconceptions about online teaching Allow about 10 minutes

Watch the video ‘What are some benefits to teaching online?’ and make a note of any concerns expressed that you had not already thought of regarding your own teaching context. Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 1 Challenging preconceptions about online teaching

1.1 Create a schedule In the face-to-face teaching environment, the teacher is not available to learners at all times of the day and night, every day of the week. When moving to an asynchronous online learning environment it is tempting for students to expect that the teacher should be always available. As the teacher, you need to establish a set schedule of when you are, and are not, available to learners. If they will need synchronous support, drop-in tutorials can be scheduled. Otherwise agree that you will respond to messages within a specific time period so that, for example, if a learner contacts you after a certain hour in the evening, they know not to expect a response until the following morning. Similarly, provide a schedule of expectations to learners – tell them by when you consider they should have reached each milestone in the course and follow up when students miss core deadlines. This should help keep on track those learners who are less capable of motivating themselves to progress through the course.

1.2 Keep learners informed Make sure you repeat information about core deadlines often. If there are to be synchronous learning events (such as webinars and group tutorials) make sure learners are reminded of the event several times in the weeks and days leading up to each event. If there is to be a change to planned activities, for example if you will be away and unable to respond to messages for a few days, make sure the learners are kept informed well in advance, and designate an alternate person the learners can contact if they need assistance urgently.

Figure 1 Learning online is very mobile

View description - Figure 1 Learning online is very mobile

1.3 Foster a sense of community Wenger’s (1998) concept of ‘communities of practice’ has gained traction in education over the past two decades. Wenger suggests that people who share a common goal or purpose can form a community of practice through which they share insights and experiences. Members of a community are practitioners in a particular area. For example, they could be teachers in a subject area who discuss their ideas and experiences in a shared online space. Active participation in a community of practice is a social process, and yet it enhances individuals’ learning and can also increase their social capital through developing connections and recognition. Building community is important for online learning, where learners can readily drift away or feel isolated due to the nature of online engagement. So think about steps to keep them together and engaged. This might involve reminding them of what they are supposed to be working on at any given moment, or fostering a sense of community between the learners by making yourself a key part of that community. Drawing on the concept of communities of practice, you could emphasise that connecting and sharing with likeminded others can be very beneficial. You might find that you spend less time engaging with students through lectures or traditional sessions because this material is instead presented in a form they can access independently at any time. In an online environment, the role of the teacher can become more supportive and collegiate, such that the learners understand that your primary role is to help them to succeed on the course. To this end, it can be useful to construct an individual relationship with each learner rather than always relying on mass or automated emails.

1.4 Ask for feedback In tandem with fostering a sense of community, you need to check at regular intervals how the learners are doing, evaluate their progression through the course materials, and ensure they are being supported. Those who respond negatively, and those who do not respond at all, will need your attention to help them develop study strategies to get them back on track. Online feedback mechanisms can provide more formative feedback for tutors than traditional paper questionnaires (Donovan et al., 2006). It can also be very beneficial to your online teaching practice to engage in peer observation with fellow online teachers (Jones and Gallen, 2016). We will be exploring how you can make the best use of feedback in Week 8 of this course.

1.5 Recognise diversity One of the main advantages of the online environment is that students can learn in their own way, at their own pace. This is attractive to people who have other responsibilities or employment. As such, try not to curtail the freedoms that online study offers by imposing unnecessary limitations on the way students undertake their learning. Differentiated instruction – a term used to describe ways in which learning might be tailored to the differences between individuals in a class – is important here. Online instructors can usefully tailor their instruction according to factors such as the individual’s ability or interests (Beasley and Beck, 2017). However, this might need to be considered in light of our previous discussion of the potential for online study to result in isolation, and the value of giving learners some shared structure to follow.

2 How can educational theories help you take your teaching online?

Figure 2 Four theories help us to understand best approach to teaching online

View description - Figure 2 Four theories help us to understand best approach to teaching online There are many theories associated with education, and it is not the role of this course to discuss them all. However, when referring to online education and its advantages to learners, four theories are often discussed and can help us to understand how to go about teaching online. These are behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism and connectivism. The principles of effective online teaching outlined in Section 1 are informed by these theories. We are not going to delve deeply into the four theories, but it can be useful to bear in mind the general ideas behind them when considering moving into the online teaching environment.

2.1 Behaviourism Skinner (1968) and Thorndike (1928) were two of the main proponents of behaviourism. Their work examined how behaviour is linked to experience and reward. So in the online teaching context, teachers should be aware to ‘reward’ their learners for positive behaviour. This need not be solely via the domain of the assessed parts of the course, but also in giving encouragement and positive feedback for engaging in discussion activities or reaching certain milestones on schedule, for example.

2.2 Cognitivism Cognitivism largely replaced behaviourism and came to prominence in the late 20th century. This theory concentrated on the organisation of knowledge, information processing and decision-making. Ausubel (1960) and Bruner (1966) were two of the main proponents of cognitivism. Bruner pursued the notion that learners should be given opportunities to discover for themselves relationships that are inherent in the learning material, a teaching technique he named ‘scaffolding’. In an online teaching environment, this could manifest itself in the teacher providing regular and focused support to each learner in the early stages of the course, but making less frequent supporting interventions as the learner begins to act successfully by themselves. Ausubel’s work in this area would suggest that it is better for the teacher to provide some materials in advance, that allow the learner to ‘organise’ their learning approach prior to them accessing the actual course materials, so that they have already developed much of the skillset they will need to successfully undertake the course.

2.3 Constructivism

Figure 3 Some of the main theories associated with education

View description - Figure 3 Some of the main theories associated with education Constructivism is concerned with how knowledge is constructed. The main proponents of constructivism were Piaget (1957) and Vygotsky (1986). Piaget was interested in how knowledge is constructed by the individual, and in particular, how children move through several quite different stages of development in terms of constructing knowledge. Vygotsky, however, was more concerned with how the social construction of knowledge has an important role to play in this process. With respect to online teaching, one of the important notions to take from Vygotsky’s work is the ‘zone of proximal development’. In short, this suggests that learners progress optimally if continually presented with tasks that are just beyond (i.e. proximal to) their current zone of ability or development. If learning tasks are

repeatedly too simple, boredom quickly ensues and the learner can be lost from the course. If the tasks are too advanced, enthusiasm can be lost, frustration builds and again, the learner may lose interest. Vygotsky suggested that the tasks in that zone of proximal development are ones that most learners can achieve with just a little help – and of course, that is where the role of the online teacher becomes vital. Some of the ways in which a teacher can offer support and challenge are different from those used in a face-to-face teaching scenario, as this course will explain.

2.4 Connectivism This theory takes into account the availability of a plethora of information on the web, which can be shared around the world almost instantaneously with the rise of social networking. Connectivism draws on chaos theory’s recognition of ‘everything being connected to everything else’. It also draws on networking principles, and theories of complexity and self-organisation, and is built on a notion that ‘the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing’ (Siemens, 2005). Siemens explains that: ‘Connectivism is driven by the understanding that decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations. New information is continually being acquired. The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital. The ability to recognise when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday is also critical.’ (Siemens, 2005) Unlike the other theories presented above, connectivism is ‘a learning theory for the digital age’ (Siemens, 2005). It is also newer and less established in terms of a body of research. Whether or not you agree with its arguments, two very important questions for this course are prompted by connectivism: has the internet fundamentally changed what learning is? And does the internet change what education, and educators, should aim to achieve?

Activity 2 How do educational theories match with your teaching? Allow about 20 minutes

Make brief notes on the differences between behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism and connectivism. Are there ideas that are present in your current teaching practice? How do they appear? Do these theories fit with your experiences of learning? Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 2 How do educational theories match with your teaching? Here you have explored some of the theories that inform the underpinning principles of effective online teaching. However, online teaching cannot take place without the application of technology, and this is what you will focus upon next.

3 Digital technologies for online teaching

Figure 4 The SAMR model

View description - Figure 4 The SAMR model This section of Week 2 gives an overview of the possible technologies available to an online teacher, and the ways in which they can support and influence teaching and learning. The SAMR model categorises four ways in which the introduction of technology changes teaching activity (Puentedura, 2017): Substitution: where technology is used as a direct substitute for what you might do already, with no functional change. Augmentation: where technology is a direct substitute, but there is functional improvement over what you did without the technology. Modification: where technology allows you to significantly redesign the task. Redefinition: where technology allows you to do what was previously not possible.

There has been substantial debate about the value of, and evidence for, the SAMR model (for example Love, 2015). However, it has achieved some popularity amongst researchers and practitioners. Here, we are simply using it as a way to categorise four ways in which a teacher might start to introduce technology into their online teaching. If you have time, you may wish to explore some of the discussions about the value of this model, starting by following up the references above. The following sections describe different groups of tools that teachers might commonly use in getting started using technology in online teaching.

3.1 Course management Online courses, and courses with any online component, are usually delivered using a host platform, commonly referred to as a Learning Management System (LMS) or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). These systems support teachers in delivering materials to the learner, keep track of registered students, and support other tasks such as assessment and communications. Teachers based in traditional universities, colleges or schools will not normally have much input into the selection process when the institution is investing in one of these products (even ‘free’ LMS systems like Moodle require investment in terms of adapting and running the product). Usually the teacher’s role is to find out what possibilities exist for teaching online using the product, and to use the elements that seem most productive in their individual context. Often a variety of tools can be included, such as blogs and wikis, quizzes and automated assessment processes, spaces for synchronous and asynchronous learning activities, and repositories for learning objects. You will learn more about the ways in which LMS tools can be used in teaching next week.

3.2 Content creation tools With online learning comes the potential to use a variety of media within online learning materials and to use content creation tools to package them all together into a coherent learning experience. As well as providing interesting ways to use audio and video media in teaching, there are online tools available for production of graphs and infographics, animations, storyboards, and more. The teacher’s role in respect of these kinds of tools is to browse and trial a range of software and to discover which kinds would help bring their online teaching alive with a variety of media and presentation formats. Week 3 of the course provides some guidance on this process. Once you have an idea of what you want to create, you will need to identify how the outputs you create with these content creation tools can be integrated with the course management system to create a dynamic and engaging online learning experience. In addition, you may design your materials to enable learners to use these tools in their online work. Beetham (2007) points out that: ‘Applications can even be shared to enable collaborative representations to be built, as happens face to face with electronic whiteboards, and with wikis online. Learners’ representations can of course be used for assessment but they can also be re-integrated into the learning situation for reflection and peer review, or even as learning materials for future cohorts.’ (Beetham, 2007, p. 35)

3.3 Networking and collaboration tools Google Docs and other elements of the Google Apps suite (as well as a range of other similar tools) allow teachers to share materials with their learners and work on them together in real time, or asynchronously. This can enable strengthening of the teacherlearner online relationship, which is particularly valuable in the early stages of a course. In addition, a range of collaborative networking tools can be used to foster group working and a sense of community between learners on an online course. Instant messaging apps can foster backchannels (Week 1 of this course introduced backchannels). Activities using Twitter or Pinterest to search for information, or using Diigo to gather together relevant internet bookmarks, can help bring an online group together with a shared objective, as well as exposing that group to a wider community in a relevant subject area.

3.4 Enhancing tools and materials you already use Many teachers will be familiar with creating Word documents and PowerPoint presentations. Materials in both formats can be repurposed for the online environment. They are a classic example of the ‘substitution category’ of the SAMR model (Puentedura, 2017) where teachers move online the same methods they used in the face-to-face environment. However, with a little more work, static documents featuring text and images can be turned into online exploration tools, linking to websites, animations, videos, blogs and so on to enrich the learning experience. These improved Word and PowerPoint files can then be integrated with other materials using content creation tools, or mounted within a course management system, for example.

4 Learning objects Digital networks and tools support sharing and replication of content with little effort. Unlike a physical object such as a printed book, a digital object can be copied, shared, edited, and re-shared without any impact on the original object. Many educators have explored how we might be supported to create and use digital objects in different ways to those physical objects. Over time, this has led to the development of several concepts which we start to introduce here, and return to in more depth in later stages of the course. The concept of a learning object suggests that small, self-contained digital units of learning can be created that can then be combined, reused or adapted for repeat usage. When these started to emerge, the term Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) was used to describe them. This was because it was argued that when a learning object was shared, it should be created in such a way that it helps another educator or learner to make use of it themselves. Recently, you are more likely to see the term Open Educational Resources (OERs) used to describe content that is shared by educators. OER has become a more popular and widely understood concept amongst educators across the world than RLO. OER is in part an evolution of the idea of a RLO, however, the two terms are not completely interchangeable. Firstly, RLOs are, by definition, designed to be shareable, whereas OERs may be teaching materials that have been deemed shareable by the author but which have not followed a specific approach that supports other educators to reuse them. What OERs do provide, by definition, is a licence that makes it clear that there is legal provision for reuse by others according to certain rules. RLOs do not necessarily have these licenses, although to be truly reusable, they should. Learning objects can vary in nature from multimedia packages with audio and/or video elements, to single tasks presented in text or slideshow documents, with myriad variations and varieties in between. The role of the online teacher may be to create or feed into the creation of learning objects, or it may be to use learning objects

produced by other teams within the institution to deliver an online learning experience, by means of asynchronous and synchronous activities. Repositories of RLOs exist on the internet, meaning that adventurous learners may discover them and use them to enhance their learning outside of the given course materials. Examples of these repositories include Wisc-Online, and MERLOT, whose RLO contents are also OERs.

Activity 3 Learning objects and your own teaching Allow about 15 minutes

Watch this video ‘Learning Objects’, and then identify and note down three potential learning objects that could be created from the materials that you have used in your own teaching or learning. Consider whether these might be successfully reused by others online, and what additions or modification, if any, they would need to be useful learning objects. Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 3 Learning objects and your own teaching Churchill (2007) proposed a typology that may be useful when thinking about the variety of learning objects and their purposes: Presentation object: Direct instruction resources to transmit specific subject matter. Practice object: Repeat practice with feedback, educational game or representation that allows practice and learning of procedures. Simulation object: Representation of some real life system or process. Conceptual model: Representation of a key concept or related concepts of subject matter. Information object: Display of information organised and displayed with modalities. Contextual representation: Data displayed as it emerges from represented authentic scenario. Now is a good time for you to develop your own plans for taking your teaching online. Each week you will build further upon these notes until you have a comprehensive plan of action.

Activity 4 Building learning objects into your plans for teaching online Allow about 60 minutes

1. Last week in Activity 4 you were asked what teaching you might want to deliver online, who you would deliver it to, and what materials you might repurpose. Revisit your notes about what you want to deliver online. If you typed your notes into the box in Week 1, they will automatically appear below this list. 2. Now return to this week’s learning. Which types of learning object might you develop or reuse in order to deliver the objectives you have? 3. Next, revisiting Section 1 of this week, consider how you might build or integrate your learning objects in a way that takes into account the ‘principles of effective online teaching’. 4. Finally, consider which tools you might need in order to create an effective learning experience using these objects. At the moment, you might not know the names of all the relevant tools, and that’s fine – simply write something like ‘a tool that will allow me to…’ and continue the sentence with a specific action such as ‘combine video with passages of text’ or ‘give my learners a multiple choice quiz’. Not available in this format. As with Activity 4 from Week 1, keep your responses in a safe place, as you will build upon them later in the course. Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 4 Building learning objects into your plans for teaching online

5 This week’s quiz Check what you’ve learned this week by taking the end-of-week quiz. Week 2 practice quiz Open the quiz in a new window or tab then come back here when you’re done.

Summary In this week you have looked at the core theories and principles that underpin good quality online teaching. You have also started to look at the digital technologies involved in online teaching and the use of learning objects – both of these will be revisited in much more detail later in the course. In fact, next week’s material is all about the technologies that you can use to deliver your online teaching. Finally for this week, let’s see how Rita’s getting along. Video content is not available in this format. View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

You can now go to Week 3.

Week 3: Selecting technologies: what to look for and how to choose

Introduction

Figure 1 There are a range of tools that can be used in online teaching

View description - Figure 1 There are a range of tools that can be used in online teaching This week will give you an overview of the main types of tools available for use online, what they offer, and how you might use them in your online teaching. This section does not aim to be, and could never be, completely comprehensive, and we’ll show you a few online resources that you may find useful for further exploration. We present some categorisations of these tools as a way of helping you to understand the potential of some of the main types of tools for

your own context. The internet is replete with blog posts, categorisations, discussions, and sales pitches about these tools. So what we want to do is give you a starting point to better navigate and use it to your advantage in your work. A brief note on privacy and personal information, which is particularly relevant to this week and next week, where you may find yourself registering for and trying different tools. If you are concerned by the privacy implications of using some of the tools covered in this week’s materials, one approach is to use an alias when creating your account with them, and to create a separate email address (e.g. using Google’s Gmail) for the purpose of registering for the service instead of using your usual email address. However, this approach will not make your actions truly anonymous or private, e.g. the service provider or your ISP will be able to identify that it is your computer accessing the service. It is possible to take further steps such as using a service to anonymise your computer (e.g. www.anonymizer.com). However, discussion of the pros and cons of such techniques is beyond the scope of this course.

Teacher reflections This week we have a video from Sarah H., who tells us about how she decides on the tools to use in teaching: Video content is not available in this format.

By the end of this week, you should be able to: describe some of the ways to categorise educational technologies for online teaching explain how some of the tools available might help with certain learning objectives start making informed decisions about which tools you might try in your own context.

1 Technologies for content creation

Figure 2 There are many resources online that can be used for creating learning resources – just be sure to check how you can use them

View description - Figure 2 There are many resources online that can be used for creating learning resources ... There are so many technologies available that could be used for content creation, it is impossible to cover them all. New tools are produced regularly, and older ones disappear, so giving specific examples can be a tricky thing to do as tools can become outdated very quickly. Here we’ve provided an overview of the kinds of tools available and some brief guidance for things you should be aware of when using them.

1.1 Repurposing and extending slide presentations Last week we touched on the idea of repurposing existing learning materials with some enhancements. Presentation tools like PowerPoint contain features for achieving such enhancement, for example, by adding narration to a slideshow, or adding sound clips to individual slides. These features can enable you to repurpose your classroom or synchronous online slideshow for an asynchronous online audience, giving that audience the benefit of your spoken accompaniment without you needing to be there. One advantage to adding individual sound clips to each slide is that the learner can choose when to begin listening – for example, they may wish to read the content of the slide first. Similarly, a vision-impaired student using a screen-reading program can listen to the text being read aloud before selecting the audio clip. By contrast, a single narration file across the entire slideshow forces the learner to pause the narration if they cannot read and listen to everything in the time you allow before moving on, and the screen-reader user will hear the text being read aloud by their assistive technology at the same time as your narration, which can be incredibly confusing. If you are looking to share your presentations online it may be appropriate to look at services for this such as Slideshare.

Tip Use a good quality microphone to ensure clear sound. These are usually inexpensive, but the increase in output quality makes investing in one worthwhile for an online teacher.

1.2 Screencasting This is a way of recording what you are doing on a computer screen, with a voiceover. It is ideal for demonstrations where learners benefit from seeing something being done. The learners can replay the screencast as often as they wish, and can pause and rewind. Applications of this kind of content creation tool include demonstrating how to use a certain software program or how to access a particular database (Peterson, 2007). Free screencasting tools, and free trials of paid-for tools, are available, although they may be limited in terms of the length of recording that can be produced, and sometimes the finished recordings contain a watermark ‘advertising’ the tool used. Paid-for tools offer a much greater range of features and flexibility in output. But you can try it out first and see if you or your organisation considers it worthwhile to purchase a licence. Camtasia and Adobe Presenter are examples of paid-for tools which offer a free trial at the time of writing. Wikipedia hosts a list of screencasting software that includes many free and paid-for tools.

Tip Screencasts can quickly accumulate very large file sizes because they capture both audio and visuals. You may aid your learners by producing a number of shorter clips rather than long ones, as these will download or buffer more quickly.

Activity 1 Demonstrations of screencasting Allow about 10 minutes

Watch these two short screencasts. The first is demonstrating how to align or justify text in word processing software, the second shows some tips for using photo editing software. It is

not the subject matter of these clips that you should note here, but you should use them as inspiration to think about the possibilities for which elements of your own teaching might be explained or demonstrated effectively by the use of screencasts. Note down some ideas for suitable topics in your own teaching. Screencast 1: Aligning text Screencast 2: Photoshop Lightroom Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 1 Demonstrations of screencasting

1.3 Low-tech, low-complexity video recording

Figure 3 Creating resources doesn’t have to be complicated

View description - Figure 3 Creating resources doesn’t have to be complicated Whilst it can be valuable in some circumstances to utilise high quality video recording equipment and to create polished videos, often in online learning this degree of complexity is unnecessary and can even be detrimental to the learning process.

Activity 2 The potential for low-complexity uses of video Allow about 10 minutes

This video highlights the benefits of a low-tech, low-complexity approach to producing video content in online teaching: Watch the video at YouTube.com. Watch the video and make notes about how achievable and effective this method could be in delivering your own teaching online. Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 2 The potential for low-complexity uses of video To demonstrate how uncomplicated, low-tech videos can be effective in online teaching, the ‘Teacher reflections’ videos used in each week of this course were all made by the people speaking in each one, at home, with just regular webcams or phone cameras. A set of guidelines were provided to try to make each video look and feel similar, and we have added the titles and adjusted the volume to be consistent, but that was all the additional work that was needed to produce the videos you see here.

Tip Even with low-tech approaches to video, certain techniques can make a big difference to the quality and effectiveness of your clips. Keep the camera stable (by placing on a firm surface or using a tripod, for example) and be aware of distracting elements in the background (such as screens, people or pets moving around, or even personal items such as family photographs).

1.4 Image manipulation Images can be used to great effect in online learning – to illustrate a concept, provide emotional impact, reinforce learning, or simply add visual decoration. Rather than only including images in their original form, try using free graphics software to manipulate and annotate images. For example, a teacher could digitally alter one image and post it side by side with the original, asking learners to ‘spot the differences’, or the teacher could obscure elements of the image and ask students to predict what is hidden (this method works especially well with mathematical or chemical equations).

Tip Ensure that the resolution and file sizes of your images are appropriate. If the resolution is too low, details may not be sufficiently clear, especially for students using certain displays or magnification software. Conversely, very high resolution images can mean huge file sizes that take a long time to download for anyone with a slower internet connection. File sizes can be checked through looking at the ‘properties’ of the file in your computer’s file manager. While software tools all differ, there are generally options when saving a file that allow resolution or quality to be changed. Also ensure that you have provided a description of the image so that students unable to view it can still understand what is being depicted (you will learn more about making your learning inclusive in Week 6).

1.5 Small interactive tools with big impact Tools that enable you to add interactive items to web pages, such as word clouds, quizzes, and drag and drop exercises are all freely available on the internet. If you have an idea for an online teaching technique that you’d like to try with your learners, the chances are that there will be a tool somewhere to help you to achieve it.

Tip Some of these types of tools may use browser plug ins that add the ability to use technologies, such as Flash or Java, to generate content for you. If this is the case, you may need to ensure that you and your students have up to date Flash and Java installations for these websites to work properly. Guidance on this can be found at Adobe Flash Player and Java. It is worth checking whether the interactive components work well on different kinds of browsers or platforms. For example, do they work on a tablet or mobile device?

Figure 4 A screenshot of a tutorial using a web conferencing platform

View description - Figure 4 A screenshot of a tutorial using a web conferencing platform

1.6 E-learning development tools Creating engaging teaching content using the tools outlined in this section should be within the capability of most computer-literate teachers. However, there are more complex tools available which can help you to generate comprehensive, multimedia, interactive online teaching materials. If you are interested in immersing yourself in new tools and techniques for content creation, you might try one of the following authoring tools. A web search for ‘e-learning authoring tools’ will bring up a range of current technologies you could try. At the time of writing, popular tools included Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, Xerte Online Toolkits, Canvas, OpenLearn Create, and more – new tools emerge every year.

1.7 Web conferencing platforms Although not usually purchased by individual teachers, most institutions have invested in at least one learning platform with web conferencing functionality. You may have heard of Adobe Connect and Blackboard Collaborate, for example, but there are many similar products available, including tools designed for individual use such as Skype, Zoom or Google Hangouts. These platforms provide the online teacher with opportunities for online classroom-like teaching scenarios, as well as offering opportunities for screensharing, group work, peer review and more. The greatest strengths of platforms like this tend to be in synchronous learning, although they can also be readily combined with tools like discussion forums to broaden the impact to asynchronous environments (Çakiroglu et al., 2016, Guo and Möllering, 2016, Kear et al., 2012). These tools can be used for replicating a seminar environment by wrapping synchronous discussion tools around a central presentation or video with voiceover.

1.8 RSS feeds and aggregators RSS is a type of web feed that allows users to view updates to online content, such as news or blog discussions. Often this is used to receive updates from news websites of interest, but it can also have a useful purpose in online teaching. For example, RSS feeds can be used to subscribe to discussion threads, so that the learner receives an email notification every time someone responds to a particular thread. As a teacher, you could also use this kind of technology to ‘push’ messages, schedule reminders and discussion topics out to learners for them to receive in a manner that suits them. Tools that gather together in a single place the RSS feeds that you have signed up to receive are known as RSS aggregators.

1.9 Plagiarism detection Plagiarism detection software is perhaps not a technology you would immediately think of as an online teaching aid. However, plagiarism prevention tools (which automatically compare assignments from students with each other, and with content found online) can be used quite successfully in meeting certain learning objectives in an online environment. Many institutions now provide staff and students with access to a plagiarism detection service. This can be employed to illustrate to learners how to write or compile assessment material in an appropriate manner, how to build on (rather than repeat) previous work, and how to reference and quote appropriately. In this way, these tools can be used to offer formative feedback rather than just being used to identify problematic assessment submissions. If you would like to know more then the first step could be to find out whether there are tools already in use at your institution, but Wikipedia also hosts a list of plagiarism detection software.

Activity 3 Incorporating technologies into your plans Allow about 10 minutes

From the nine technologies presented in this section, select two of interest and make notes about how you would like to use them in online teaching. Add these to your existing notes about your plans for moving into online teaching. Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 3 Incorporating technologies into your plans

2 Personalisation with tools for learning

Figure 5 Personalisation

View description - Figure 5 Personalisation Personalisation is the tailoring of teaching and teaching materials (and the environment in which they are delivered) to suit the needs and preferences of a range of learners. It links closely to accessibility for learners with disabilities, and we shall examine this aspect in more detail in Week 6. This week, however, we are considering how technology can be used to support the whole range of learners, whatever their needs or preferences. Online teaching usually has more opportunities for personalisation than face-to-face teaching, simply because it is easier for learners to use the available technology to modify their learning environment to suit their needs. (Imagine, for example, the ease of dimming a computer screen, compared to the difficulties in dimming a classroom environment without inconveniencing other learners.)

Figure 6 Learners can adapt online lessons to suit their own needs

View description - Figure 6 Learners can adapt online lessons to suit their own needs Asynchronous online learning usually has more opportunities for personalisation than synchronous learning because it gives the learners flexibility in terms of when and where they access the learning materials. The ideal way to optimise personalisation in online teaching has two elements: Design teaching materials that will meet a wide group of needs and preferences, utilising a variety of media and teaching techniques. Put control in the hands of each learner, allowing them to adjust the materials to suit themselves.

2.1 Serving diverse audiences It is worthwhile designing materials and utilising technologies with as broad a range of learners as possible in mind. By doing this, your materials are ready to reuse in later years or different contexts. This section delivers some general points, so that you may start to think about how these considerations would be applied to your own move into online teaching. In Week 6 we cover this area in greater detail.

Instructions Sometimes designing and delivering materials for a wide range of audience needs simply means enhancing clarity. Ensure your instructions are clear and unambiguous (be consistent with terms like Units, Pages, Weeks, Sections and so on) (Ernest et al., 2013). If you are creating audio or audiovisual material, ensure you speak slowly and clearly, taking pauses to allow digestion of key sentences or phrases.

Cultural references Be aware that your learners may not all have the same cultural backgrounds, so be careful when using idioms or cultural references in teaching materials (Arbour et al., 2015). You may also need to consider your choice of images so that diversity is fully reflected.

Flexibility of schedule Whilst it is vital to provide students with a schedule of key dates and deadlines in the course, and to ensure at regular intervals that they are aware of what is immediately ahead of them, you can also design in flexibility where possible. If there is not a strict need for every learner to complete a certain task at the same time, then allow a little more time to those who need it. Some learners may need individual attention from the teacher in order to keep to the overall

schedule – this is a further element of personalisation (Ernest et al., 2013).

Promotion of communication and peer support Online learners should be encouraged to comment and reflect on the learning. This may be achieved using their own spaces, such as blogs, or more ‘public’ spaces, such as discussion forums. Asynchronous forums allow everyone the chance to input on their own terms and at their own pace, whilst discussing and commenting upon each other’s posts. These interactions, if supported and moderated appropriately by the online teacher, can help to foster a sense of community among the learners, which in turn can lead to the development of peer support. Peer support is a key aspect of personalisation as it allows learners to explore and learn as a collective, with each member of the collective playing to their own strengths.

2.2 Giving control to learners It may sound like a complicated process, but there are several ways of giving control to learners that involve little extra work on the part of the teacher.

Allow choice of formats It is standard accessibility practice to provide transcripts for audio or audiovisual material, to provide captions for video material, to provide alternative text for images and so on. However, these alternative formats are often used by a much wider range of people than those for whom they were originally intended, so ensure that all of these format options are available as standard for all learners (Fidaldo and Thormann, 2017). Similarly, some learners may prefer to receive your feedback as an audio mp3 rather than written text. This can even be quicker to produce than annotating a document with text-based feedback.

Allow choice of display characteristics Many online teaching materials, including web pages, documents and slideshow presentations, can be easily altered by learners to suit their needs in terms of font, font size, colour and contrast. Point out to your learners how they can personalise your materials, even linking them with guidance pages on the internet describing how to use built-in web browser features to achieve these changes.

3 Technologies for social communication

Figure 7 Manage the introduction of social media into your online lessons

View description - Figure 7 Manage the introduction of social media into your online lessons As you saw in the Week 1 section on backchannels, and the discussion of connectivism in Week 2, social media can have an important role in online teaching. There are a variety of social communication tools that can be employed in online teaching, each with its own potential advantages (and sometimes drawbacks too).

There sometimes needs to be a phased approach to the use of social media tools in online teaching. Skills in providing constructive feedback perhaps need to be honed in a relatively closed environment (such as a discussion forum, commenting first on a teacher-provided item, and later on each other’s contributions) before being moved to a more public arena (Jones and Gallen, 2016). Twitter and YouTube can both be used to great effect in demonstrating how public commenting can easily move away from ‘constructive’ and in an unhealthy direction. If you wish to read more about the positive and negative effects of using social media in teaching, Haylett (2016) gathers together a variety of literature on the subject and draws the conclusion that there appears to be a significant effect on student engagement from the use of social media. However, there may potentially be negative effects on student attainment.

3.1 Social technologies for promoting community

Figure 8 Social media tools can give learners an easy way to communicate with each other

View description - Figure 8 Social media tools can give learners an easy way to communicate with each ... Some social media tools can be used to enhance communication and cohesion among your group of online learners. ‘Collecting’ tools such as Pinterest can help learners discover a topic collectively and share their findings or ideas. Social bookmarking tools such as Diigo can aid in broadening learners’ research skills, connecting them with

resources they hadn’t previously discovered. Of course, simply using the right technologies will not force a sense of community and shared learning to develop in any given cohort, but it will give it a chance of happening. If Facebook is available to all members of your cohort (it is blocked in some countries), the creation of a class Facebook group can give learners an easy way to communicate with each other, as well as providing the teacher with an opportunity to provide prompt scheduling reminders, and to share relevant resources. Coughlan and Perryman (2015) have written about the use of student-led Facebook groups and their role in facilitating learning and achieving educational inclusion.

3.2 Social technologies for enhancing presence Some social media tools can be utilised in online teaching to help the learners develop a sense of place within the ‘wider world’ and to start enhancing their online profile (Veletsianos, 2016). Blogs can be used to help learners become used to critically reflecting on a given topic, to become familiar with expressing themselves in a ‘public’ arena, to enable the teacher to put explanatory text alongside class materials to allow absentees greater context when catching up. Twitter can be used to demonstrate the power of the collective, to share discovered resources, to seek feedback, and to contact ‘experts’ in a given subject area. We will explore uses of social media in more detail in Week 4 of this course.

Activity 4 Thinking about the role of social media in online teaching Allow about 15 minutes

Take a look at this infographic which provides a wide range of suggestions for ways in which social media can be used in education: (You should be able to click on the image to zoom in closer.) Using the section entitled ‘How to use social media in class’, write down two to three ideas that you might like to try out one day. Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 4 Thinking about the role of social media in online teaching

4 Dealing with change in the technology sector Change is an ever-present topic of conversation in education, and particularly with respect to technology.

Figure 9 Technology changes rapidly across all sectors, including education

View description - Figure 9 Technology changes rapidly across all sectors, including education The rapid and constant evolution of technology means that some of the tools you read about today will have disappeared in a year, while new ones will become available. Hopefully, however, the principles will remain and you will be able to view the changed landscape with the ability to select the tools that help you to achieve your objectives in online teaching. Before making substantial use of a tool, or committing to purchasing it, you may want to consider aspects such as whether it has a

substantial user base, or what the developer or supplier’s model for sustainability, support or improvement is. The next section provides some guidance on how to make choices, even if the tools we have mentioned in this course are no longer available or suitable.

5 How to choose

Figure 10 Choosing the right tool

View description - Figure 10 Choosing the right tool How you choose which technology to use can depend on a number of factors (Watson, 2011) such as: The intended learning outcomes for the course. Technology must serve the pedagogical outcomes, not determine them. The students’ situation (location, access to internet, number of students in the class, etc. This reflects the issues covered in Section 2 of this week). The activities or technical requirements of the course content (e.g. inclusion of large graphic files, collaborative tools, live chat features, external guest lecturer access, file sharing, discussions, etc.). The breadth and depth of the teacher’s previous online experience. While it is tempting to use every new tool and feature in your teaching, it is better to start slowly and build up your experience and confidence. Introduce one component, use it appropriately, evaluate its success, and then adjust your teaching where necessary. Slowly introduce more components once you and/or the students are more comfortable with the technology. (In Week 8 of this course you will learn more about ‘action research’ and evaluation of your use of technology in teaching.) The requirements or policies of the institution regarding the use of different online technologies. Whether a centralised learning management system (LMS) or free, open web technology is available or preferable. Cost, to yourself or your organisation, both directly in purchase costs and indirectly in the amount of time needed to become

competent in its usage. If you would like to read more about technology and tools for online learning, JISC (2016) have created a resource combining guidance with case studies, and including a useful checklist.

5.1 Linking learning outcomes, activities and tools The University of New South Wales Sydney (2017) provide a very useful table grouping together common themes of learning outcomes, the kinds of activities often used with learners to achieve those outcomes, and some potentially useful online technologies for each. An edited version of this table forms the basis for Activity 5 below.

Activity 5 Identifying technologies that you might use Allow about 45 minutes

Read the activity tasks below and then examine the table that follows. 1. Which tools and associated practices shown in the table do you or your learners (as far as you know) currently use in a teaching and/or learning context? Spend just a few minutes making a list. 2. As far as you know, outside of the teaching environment, which tools do your learners use (or which would you presume that they use) to express themselves, to reflect, to explore and to play? Again, make a list. 3. Which of the tools on your two lists above are social? Put an asterisk by each of the tools that you would describe as social. Provide your answer... View comment - Untitled part Table 1 Learning outcomes and selecting technology tools

Desired learning outcomes (the ‘what?’)

Rationale (the ‘why?’)

Information literacy.

Exposure to, awareness of, Global practice. contribute to external: Digital literacy. activity Ethical practice. conversations resources Preparation for techniques success. and approaches. Appropriate referencing. Appropriate equipment of the 21st century graduate. Managing information load.

Relevant activities ( Potential the ‘how?’) technological tools

Multi-dimensional evaluation.

RSS feeds/aggregators.

Sharing and reviewing online resources.

Blogs. Plagiarism prevention (e.g. Turnitin).

Connecting with Presentation sharing outside (e.g. SlideShare). experts/communities. Video sharing (e.g. Check for plagiarism. YouTube, Vimeo). Media Podcasting. making/mashups. Online/distance Digital storytelling. learning platforms Copyright/Creative (e.g. Blackboard commons Collaborate, Adobe discussions. Connect). Activities relevant and authentic to discipline.

Screencasting.

Embedded activities for generic attributes. Contextual prompts to evaluate sources. Self-directed learning.

Negotiate understanding.

Problem/case-based learning.

Reflective practice.

Feedback on the course.

Flexible access to material.

Engaged learning.

Reflection on learning.

Project planning and management.

Co-learning.

Global practice.

Student self-tests.

Quality learning Consistency of environment experience. and experience.

Teacher (and technology) as facilitator of learning.

Wikis. Quiz/survey. Recorded lectures. Video sharing (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo). Podcasting. Mobile learning (e.g. smartphone, tablet).

Online/distance learning platforms Choice of modes and (e.g. Blackboard activities. Collaborate, Adobe Access to technology Connect). (e.g. mobile devices).

Agreed code of conduct. Giving and receiving feedback.

Multiple perspectives. Feedback on performance.

Collaborative writing. Wikis. Group negotiation and planning.

Blogs.

Assessment of teamwork.

Peer review (e.g. via forum).

Review (e.g. group work). Publishing. Reflection.

Discussion forum.

Online/distance learning platforms (e.g. Blackboard Collaborate, Adobe Connect). Screencasting.

Working in teams.

Negotiate understanding.

Collaborative practice.

Multiple perspectives (for teacher). Management of group work. Digital literacy. Inclusivity.

Collaborative writing. Wikis. Group negotiation and planning. Project planning and management. Problem/case-based learning. Assessing team contribution. Media-based projects. Variety of communication styles supported.

Critical reviewing.

Negotiate understanding.

Critical thinking. Multiple perspectives. Independent learning. Feedback. Practice of critical reviewing. Practice of critical thinking.

Blogs. Peer review (e.g. via forum). Google Docs. Online/distance learning platforms (e.g. Blackboard Collaborate, Adobe Connect). Moderated discussion.

Reflecting.

Blogs.

Debating.

Discussion forum.

Reviewing.

Online/distance learning platforms (e.g. Blackboard Collaborate, Adobe Connect).

Social knowledge building. Review of / commentary on online material. Give and receive feedback.

Seminar replicators (e.g. VoiceThread). Video sharing (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo). Podcasting.

RSS feeds/aggregators. Peer review (e.g. via forum). Synthesis of learning.

Able to solve new problems.

Experience ‘authentic’ practice.

Authentic voice via video/audio.

Apply learning (at high level).

Application of knowledge in integrated way.

Integrative (could be group) project.

Online/distance learning platforms (e.g. Blackboard Collaborate, Adobe Connect).

Problem/case-based learning activities.

Simulations e.g. virtual experiments. Animations. Written Negotiate communication. understanding. Contribute to external activity, conversations, resources. Appropriate referencing.

Reflecting.

Blogs.

Debating.

Discussion forum.

Reviewing.

Plagiarism prevention (e.g. Turnitin).

Publishing. Checking for plagiarism.

Presentation sharing (e.g. SlideShare). Messaging (e.g. Twitter, Yammer). RSS feeds/aggregators.

Oral communication.

Sharing audio/video material.

Seminar replicators (e.g. VoiceThread).

Presentation skills.

Presenting.

Video sharing (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo).

Language proficiency.

Audio/video discussion and feedback.

Digital storytelling.

Podcasting. Presentation sharing (e.g. SlideShare). Online/distance learning platforms (e.g. Blackboard Collaborate, Adobe Connect). Screencasting.

Activity 6 Selecting tools Think back to the activities in the previous two weeks, and retrieve your notes about what you want to deliver online and what kinds of tools you would need to employ to achieve this. Which tools from your lists already map across to some of your desired objectives in teaching online? Which objectives do not have an already-used tool mapped across to them? Have you discovered anything in this week’s materials that might help you meet these objectives? Your answers are saved within the course, and you are likely to revisit them later. Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 6 Selecting tools

6 This week’s quiz Check what you’ve learned this week by taking the end-of-week quiz. Week 3 practice quiz Open the quiz in a new window or tab then come back here when you’re done.

Summary This week you have learned about a lot of different tools and technologies, including social media, that can be used in online teaching. You have learned how to choose the right tool for each task, beginning with the learning outcomes you want learners to achieve. Next week we will be looking at another side to social media’s role in taking your teaching online – the role of facilitating the creation and development of your own networks. While you contemplate all of the tools and technologies that you’ve been made aware of this week, let’s see how Rita’s been coping with all this useful information. Video content is not available in this format. View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

You can now go to Week 4.

Week 4: The benefits of support networks and how to develop them

Introduction

Figure 1 Technology gives us the opportunity to connect widely

View description - Figure 1 Technology gives us the opportunity to connect widely One of the best ways to enhance your confidence and ability in teaching online is to reach out to others. This may be to form a network of peers who are all at a similar stage and can work through teaching ideas together and offer moral support and shared experiences, or it may involve connecting to people who have already achieved the objective you are trying to achieve and can pass on useful advice. The great advantage of using online tools, and in particular social networking tools, to establish these connections, is that you can decide what you want to discuss, how, when and with whom. You can be passive and ‘lurk’, or be more active and join in with sharing or discussion. The control lies in your hands, and you can choose to share only what you want to share, or how much time you want to invest. Concepts that we have introduced to help you understand online teaching, such as synchronous and asynchronous communication, also apply to the variety of platforms and tools you find here. Social

networking tools include discussion or message boards, but equally, can focus on ways of sharing and curating information such as social bookmarking and micro-blogging. Much of what you do when you use the internet can be shared if you want it to be. In turn, you should be able to find people with similar interests in using online learning to you, who share findings or resources that they think are useful. In this week of the course you will find out about what advantages can be gained by expanding your online networks, and will start to work on developing your own.

Teacher reflections This week we have another clip from Sarah S., whom you have already encountered in a previous week. Here she reflects on her experiences with online networks: Video content is not available in this format. View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

By the end of this week, you should be able to: understand the benefits of networks to the online teacher discuss the concepts of communities of practice and network weather develop useful online networks to augment your teaching practice.

1 Benefits of engaging with online networks

Figure 2 People come together for all sorts of reasons – social and professional – and networks can help with this

View description - Figure 2 People come together for all sorts of reasons – social and professional ... We’ll start with a quote from an article about the connecting of computers together to form networks: ‘Most of the benefits of networking can be divided into two generic categories: connectivity and sharing. Networks allow computers, and hence their users, to be connected together. They also allow for the easy sharing of information and resources, and cooperation between the devices in other ways. Since modern business depends so much on the intelligent flow and management of information, this tells you a lot about why networking is so valuable.’ (Kozierok, 2005) With just a few amendments, this quote can describe the benefits of social networking to any educator:

Most of the benefits of networking can be divided into two generic categories: connectivity and sharing. Networks allow teachers to be connected together. They also allow for the easy sharing of information and resources, and cooperation between the teachers in other ways. Since online education depends so much on the intelligent flow and management of information, this tells you a lot about why networking is so valuable. As you will have seen in the previous weeks of this course, teaching online requires thought, planning, and perhaps a little bravery in trying new technologies and techniques. Any feelings of nervousness can be reduced by gaining support from networks of people who are either in a similar position, or who have already done what you are starting to do. Luckily, in today’s age there are a large number of mechanisms by which we can participate in networks, helping each of us to start to develop a personal network around ourselves (Ansmann et al., 2014). It’s worth noting that networking is largely invisible to others and only partly visible to the direct participants in any exchange. This is true whether networking occurs face to face or online. It is not always clear (sometimes even to yourself) whether you are actively networking, or just having a chat – and often one can become the other without anyone formally recognising it. Networking can be something that obviously bears that name – introducing yourself to a group at a face-to-face conference or posting in an ‘Online teaching newcomers’ discussion forum, for example. But networking can also take place much less formally, for example by following relevant Twitter accounts, or by chatting to colleagues or peers. There are a number of benefits to participating in networking activities and these will be discussed on the following page.

1.1 Sharing ideas

Figure 3 Social networking allows you to interact however you wish, and so you can focus more on certain networks and communities, and dip into others more occasionally

View description - Figure 3 Social networking allows you to interact however you wish, and so you can ... Teachers can readily use social networks to share teaching ideas, tips and tricks with others in a similar position. You can join an online network and simply ‘lurk’ (observe without contributing), or once you have a feel for the way things are done, you could comment on other people’s ideas, and use them for your own inspiration. Eventually you can run your own ideas past others, and by doing this you can obtain valuable feedback and improve your materials before they go in front of learners. It is also wise when considering partnerships, networks and communities, to be aware of potential ‘boundaries’ between different types of people, different roles, even different pay grades (MacGillivray, 2017) – this is another good reason for initially ‘lurking’ to assess the situation in each new network or community you join.

1.2 Developing partnerships and communities Once you have established a presence in a particular network, you may start to find your relationships with certain individuals are proving to be of particular value. You may start to call on specific individuals for advice, or find yourself commenting more freely on their materials. These developments can be channelled into the formation of a community of practice (this will be explored further in Section 2 of this week).

1.3 Sharing information Teachers can also use social networking to connect with peers who are more experienced in online teaching (and some day you may be the more experienced teacher that others are connecting with). Don’t be afraid to reach out to those who may have more experience to ask for advice on how best to approach an element of online teaching. If someone reaches out to you for guidance, return the favour.

1.4 Professional development Whilst social networking can be done informally and outside of the regular work environment, its value to your professional development can be marked (Davis, 2011). By sharing with peers and experts via networks, you can advance your online teaching skillset more rapidly than you would do alone, and solve issues that you may encounter by asking for assistance from your network. In addition, beyond the subject matter of online teaching, simply developing the skill of effective networking is a further asset to your professional development. Many educational institutions now actively support their staff to develop social networks and recognise the value of this.

1.5 Making contacts Social networking can remove many of the barriers to engaging in dialogue with the ‘leading lights’ in your field. If you have a question for a particular expert who, a couple of decades ago, would be largely reachable only by approaching them at a face-to-face conference, now you can use your networks to pop them a quick question on Twitter, for example. Social networking has made the education world much more accessible to its constituent members than it has ever been before (Davis, 2011).

Activity 1 Identifying your existing roles in networks Allow about 30 minutes

Complete the following table. Which of the following networks do you already participate in? In each case, consider the type of participation you have with each network. (Participations described as ‘informal’ can be ad hoc, on any topic, sometimes unrelated to your own teaching practice; participations described as ‘formal’ would be focused on improving your teaching or sharing resources.) Table 1 Types of involvement in online networks Type of participation > Type of network ˅

Informal online contact with teachers in your organisation that you interact with mostly face to face. Informal online contact with teachers in your organisation that

Observer (or ‘lurker’, reading other people’s input but not contributing directly)

Responder (answering questions or commenting on discussions)

Text contributor (posting questions or starting discussions)

Information contributor (providing factual information that is not your own material)

Sharer (contributing your own material for discussion or reuse)

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you interact with mostly online. Informal online contact with teachers in other organisations that you have met face to face at some time. Informal online contact with teachers that have come together informally via social media. Formal online contact with teachers of the same subject discipline or age group. Formal online contact with teachers of many backgrounds focused around particular teaching topics (e.g. flipped classrooms, online teaching etc.) Formal online contact with other members of organisations of teachers (e.g. members of professional bodies, unions etc.)

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View comment - Activity 1 Identifying your existing roles in networks

2 Communities of practice and network weather

Figure 4 Communities and networks

View description - Figure 4 Communities and networks When groups of people come together online around a particular topic or job role, they are often referred to as communities. They are also a form of network. Communities can be central to helping to develop your approach to teaching online. Maybe you’re an educator seeking guidance about how to design an online version of a particular learning activity, or wanting to find out who are the online teaching experts in your area of practice. Whatever your reason for seeking contact with others in your field, participating in a relevant community can be of great value, and can lead to your own personal skill development, as well as allowing you to participate in discussions with experts in the field

and ultimately share the knowledge you have gained with others who may be just starting out.

2.1 Communities of practice Communities come in many forms. When we introduced the concept of ‘communities of practice’ in Week 2, it was noted that communities can develop wherever a common interest exists between individuals, such as a shared profession. Wenger’s (now Wenger-Trayner) most recent definition is this: ‘Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. Note that this definition allows for, but does not assume, intentionality: learning can be the reason the community comes together or an incidental outcome of member’s interactions.’ (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner, 2015) What is a community of practice and what does one look like? The Wenger-Trayners identify three characteristics of a community of practice: A shared domain of interest (a community of practice is not just a club of friends, membership implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people). An active community, sharing and exploring the domain (members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other; they care about their standing with each other. But members of a community of practice do not necessarily work together on a daily basis). An impact on the practice of those involved (members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems – in short, a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction).

They go on to say that ‘it is the combination of these three elements that constitutes a community of practice. And it is by developing these three elements in parallel that one cultivates such a community’. So this is what you need to achieve if you want to turn your networking into the establishment of a community of practice. You may find that this theory very accurately matches your experiences of professional communities, or you may find you would prefer to modify it in some way. Whichever of these views you take, the theory provides a framework through which you will be able to compare and evaluate the communities that you become aware of.

2.2 Network weather

Figure 5 Network weather is so called because it refers to technologies that affect us whether we use them or not, like the weather!

View description - Figure 5 Network weather is so called because it refers to technologies that affect ... Weller (2011) summarises the concept of network weather (first coined by Greenfield, 2010). Looking at people in cities, they argue that your life is impacted by new technologies, whether you use them or not – they are like the weather. Weller goes on to describe a scenario that might be familiar to educators: ‘When you arrive you are disappointed to find out that someone who has attended for the previous three years, and who you always have a meal with, has stayed at home because they can attend remotely. In the opening session the keynote speaker makes a claim that someone checks and passes around via Twitter, and it seems they have misrepresented the research findings. There is a noticeable

change in atmosphere and the questions the speaker receives are more challenging than you usually encounter. In another session the speaker takes questions from the remote audience, which includes students and this generates a very good discussion about the learner perspective. That evening the conference bar seems rather empty, and seeing an old colleague he informs you that there is an alternative conference Facebook page, and they have arranged a meeting in a local bar, with a discussion theme. The next day the afternoon doesn't have any presentations; instead it has an informal format where the participants seek to create a set of learning resources and a link up with four remote hubs in different cities.’ (pg. 116) This may at first glance seem like a negative summary of the technological developments at the conference, but these changes to people’s behaviour represent real changes to an activity at the core of scholarly practice and are therefore a good example of the type of network weather that we may all experience in our day-to-day lives as educators. Weller summarises the technological developments affected by network weather in that scenario: Remote participation – streaming events allows people to attend remotely and often put questions to the speakers. The backchannel – Twitter, in particular, has become a potent force for creating a backchannel of conversation, with positive and negative results. Amplified events – many conferences now seek to draw in a wider audience using remote participation, beyond the normal constituents. Socialisation – people will organise events before and during the conference using social networks. Alternative session formats – in response to the impact of such technologies, conference organisers are beginning to use the

face-to-face element of conferences to do more than just content delivery. Using networked tools to live blog, tweet or otherwise capture conference interaction as the event happens is becoming more common and is referred to as the conference ‘backchannel’ (you were introduced to this concept in Week 1 of this course). This allows participants to discuss the conference activity while it is in progress, both with those at the event, and other interested parties. Some conferences make this backchannel discussion more visible, referring to queries posed online. Whether formally captured or not, one effect of this networked activity is that it presents and preserves discussion and reactions to the conference as these occur, in a way that can be searched after the event is over. It is an addition to the usual recordings and is less tightly controlled.

Activity 2 Network weather and you Allow about 20 minutes

As a teacher who is venturing into the online world, you need to be aware of the network weather around you. Jot down some brief thoughts in response to each of the following questions: Where might you begin to look for easy networking opportunities that may be available to you that you simply don’t yet know exist? In which of these would you wish to begin as a ‘lurker’? Are there any that you might feel sufficiently confident to actively participate in now? What networking activity do you already participate in that could be modified or refocused to bring you networking benefits? How could you harness the power of the ‘weather’ that is already around you to benefit your online teaching practice? Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 2 Network weather and you

3 Developing your networks Whether you’re looking to join a wider community, wanting to find out about best practice, interested in the latest developments in online education, or seeking to share successful techniques and technologies, you may find it valuable to connect with like-minded people by establishing and developing networks.

Figure 6 Technology allows us to form networks globally, not just with those immediately around us

View description - Figure 6 Technology allows us to form networks globally, not just with those immediately ... If you are interested in expanding your work-related networks, this can be done by joining an established community of practice (Krutka et al., 2014). Look around the internet for communities or ‘teaching groups’ (Heinrich, 2015) relating to your own particular niche of education – such as the level at which you teach, the subject you teach, any particular objectives with respect to online learning. It might take some searching to find a few communities that seem like a good fit for you. Join one or several of these and ‘lurk’ – observe the kinds of discussions that happen and decide if they are the sort of thing that would benefit you to ultimately take part in. One of these

communities of practice may be the ideal starting point for establishing, or further developing your own research identity, skills and your sense of membership of a community. For those working in education, there are several services that offer ways to find and connect with academics. One of the most widely used is the social networking site LinkedIn.com, which provides for all kinds of professionals and claims to be ‘the world’s largest professional network on the Internet’ (LinkedIn, 2017). For those working in higher education, more specialised academic-specific social networking services are also available, such as Academia.edu and ResearchGate.net, which have been set up to help academics and researchers engage with each other through sharing publications and facilitating communication. For those working in a school environment, EducatorsConnect.com might be a good place to start. Another useful way to make contact with like-minded people is to use a microblogging site such as Twitter (Carpenter and Krutka, 2014) or Weibo. These can be fast-flowing rivers of information, much of it irrelevant to you, and, much like crossing that fast-flowing river, if you do not go into it with a clear plan, you risk being swept away. So, when considering using a microblogging site to develop your network, you should follow these steps to ensure you maximise its usefulness to you:

Maximising usefuleness of microblogging You'll need to identify the tasks you wish to perform: gathering information on a particular subject: make a list of keywords or hashtags that you may wish to search for (hashtags can include phrases and acronyms, but always without spaces, for example #teachingonline, #OpenLearn or #cccotc18. following and learning from experts in a particular subject: list the names of the experts you wish to search for. making connections with people in a similar position to yourself: brainstorm how you might find those people – how will you search for them? You may need to combine some keywords or hashtags into a single search, to enable you to filter out information that is related but not precisely what you are looking for. sharing your own work: identify precisely which items you would like to share, list some keywords and hashtags that might describe your work, and practise creating a short microblogging message of the correct length that describes your work succinctly. There are of course other tasks you may wish to do as well, such as following particular celebrities or information sources unrelated to your work environment. If you wish to use Twitter, these instructions could help you to maximise the benefits. If you wish to use a different tool, the principles of the instructions will remain valid, but you will need to alter the method and tools to suit your platform.

1. Create an account (on Twitter, or your preferred microblogging site). 2. Use your Twitter account to register with Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck is a very good way to make sense of the vast amount of information rushing by on Twitter, and helps you to arrange the information you need in easily managed columns. 3. Use the search function in Tweetdeck to generate new columns relating to your keywords or hashtags of interest, or search for experts and follow them – all tweets from accounts that you follow will appear in your Home column in Tweetdeck, in chronological order. 4. If you are looking for peers, first find and follow likely individuals – with any luck they will follow you back (it is good Twitter etiquette to follow individuals who follow you). Once you are familiar with one another’s tweets you could then suggest forming a List (a column in your Tweetdeck that gathers together the tweets from your selected individuals, and that others can subscribe to). 5. If you want to share your own work, learn from how others do it, observe how they use their tweets, how they ask for feedback or for others to retweet them. You need to have built up a good number of followers before sharing your work, so that their retweets will exponentially increase your reach.

Activity 3 How do you share information with others? Allow about 30 minutes

Think about any networks and communities you already belong to (formal and informal). How do these communities share information? What tools do they use? How could they use other channels or media to improve that flow of information? How could you increase your connections and reach? How might tools like Twitter, Weibo or other social networking sites help you? Provide your answer... Finally, think back to Activity 5 last week (your notes from that activity are displayed in the box below), and build upon your objectives by adding notes about how you might use networks and communities to help you achieve your online teaching objectives. Not available in this format. Again, keep your answers in a safe place, as you will revisit them. View comment - Untitled part

4 This week’s quiz Now it’s time to complete the Session 4 badge quiz. It is similar to previous quizzes, but this time, instead of answering 5 questions, there will be 15. Remember, this quiz counts towards your badge. If you’re not successful the first time, you can attempt the quiz again in 24 hours. Week 4 compulsory badge quiz Open the quiz in a new window or tab then come back here when you’re done.

Summary This week’s material has presented you with a variety of possible paths you could take towards joining, creating or developing networks. The benefits of being connected to other teachers in this way have been highlighted. Hopefully, you now have some ideas about where you want your networking to go next. Rita has certainly got a few ideas: Video content is not available in this format. View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

You are now half way through the course. The Open University would really appreciate your feedback and suggestions for future improvement in our optional end-of-course survey, which you will also have an opportunity to complete at the end of Week 8. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others. You can now go to Week 5.

Week 5: Finding, using, and sharing educational materials online

Introduction

Figure 1 Open or not? Images on the internet may be subject to copyright

View description - Figure 1 Open or not? Images on the internet may be subject to copyright The internet contains an abundance of images, textbooks, videos, learning objects and more, which teachers could take and use in their teaching. However, this creates opportunities and challenges for online teachers. Not all of these resources can be readily reused due to restrictions of copyright or intellectual property. This week, we explore this topic and focus in particular on Open Educational Resources (OER). These are online materials that have been shared with the intent that others can reuse them. You will learn about Creative Commons licences, which underpin OER, and which you can apply to share your own work. These make it clear exactly what permissions there are to reuse the shared resources, and provide you with choices about how your own shared resources can be reused by others. Finally in this week, you will examine some

repositories and other ways of finding OER to reuse and repurpose in your own context.

Teacher reflections This week we hear from Andy, who discusses his experiences with finding, using, and sharing OER as part of teaching practice: Video content is not available in this format. View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

By the end of this week, you should be able to: define Open Educational Resources and list some examples of what this term covers. understand Creative Commons licences and use these properly search OER Repositories and the wider internet for material that you can legally reuse in your teaching.

1 Open Education Resources Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning materials that are freely available in the public domain and are specifically licensed for reuse without cost. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation have supported many OER initiatives. Their definition of OER is: ‘Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.’ (William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, 2018)

1.1 What are Open Education Resources? The term can include: textbooks, course readings, and other learning content; simulations, games, and other learning applications; syllabi, quizzes, and assessment tools; and virtually any other material that can be used for educational purposes. OER typically refers to electronic resources, including those in multimedia formats, and such materials are generally released under a Creative Commons, or similar, licence that supports open use of the content. OER can originate from colleges and universities, libraries, archival organisations, government agencies, commercial organisations such as publishers, or faculty or other individuals who develop educational resources they are willing to share (Educause, 2010). You might recall that we briefly talked about OER in Week 2 and how this has partly evolved from the idea that educators could produce Reusable Learning Objects (RLO). With some OER, the focus is more on sharing educational content with a licence, rather than how applicable the materials are for reuse. Some can easily be reused, while others could require editing to make them suitable for use with your learners. Some OER may not meet accessibility or interoperability requirements (Baker, 2008), and quality and accuracy must always be checked. However, repositories and search engines can help you to find good OER for your purposes.

Activity 1 Why are Open Educational Resources important? Allow about 15 minutes

Watch this short video ‘OER Introduction II’ explaining why OERs are important, and note down what users have permission to do with OERs (found in the section 1:13–1:24). Provide your answer...

View comment - Activity 1 Why are Open Educational Resources important?

1.2 Why should I be interested in OER? Whilst the ideas had been discussed previously, the profile of OER was raised dramatically in 2002 with the launch of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) OpenCourseWare initiative. This bold move saw MIT make the materials from its entire catalogue of courses freely available online (D’Oliveira et al., 2010). That same year, UNESCO first adopted the term Open Educational Resources, and then in that December, the first set of Creative Commons licences were produced (you will learn more about Creative Commons later in this week’s materials). Today, the open education space is occupied by both individual educators who reuse and share materials, and large educational enterprises with varying interpretations of what ‘open’ means. The rapid growth of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) from the likes of FutureLearn, edX, Coursera and Udacity are important in the story of open education. Although these courses may be ‘open’ in terms of not restricting registration, the materials used are not necessarily licensed as OER and may be subject to copyright. MOOCs and other forms of online learning can be studied in detail through other course offerings from The Open University. See the ‘next steps’ section on the course Conclusion page.

Figure 2 The OER logo

View description - Figure 2 The OER logo One form of OER that has rapidly gained popularity in recent years is Open Textbooks. These can reduce the cost to learners of acquiring course texts, and could increase access to education. Given the high costs of education and the challenges of providing learning to all those who want it, many educators are excited by the idea of free, high-quality texts, which can save money, be collaboratively produced and reviewed, and be customised to the needs of a particular class (Ozdemir & Hendricks, 2017). There is also the potential that open textbooks can increase student satisfaction (Pitt, 2015).

Figure 3 Open textbooks

View description - Figure 3 Open textbooks

2 Evaluating the licensing and quality of online resources So, how best to know what material is available for use and what isn’t? In this section we will look at some of the ways of deciding what you should use.

2.1 Copyright and the role for Creative Commons licences When a piece of creative work like an image, video, or textbook is produced, the creator of the work may have certain legal rights that restrict the ability of others to use or reuse that material without seeking permission from the author. This is known as copyright, and it applies automatically to all works unless the author chooses otherwise. The copyright notice © is a familiar symbol online. However, it is not necessarily helpful in determining whether or not you can use a resource, as sometimes copyrights expire, and in some cases it is no longer necessary to use it – in the USA, for example, the symbol is no longer required for works published after March 1989. Absence of notice does not necessarily mean the work is within the public domain – on the contrary, copyright must be assumed to be in place unless stated otherwise. Intellectual property is a broader term that incorporates copyright and other elements like patents. This is where Creative Commons licensing has filled a potentially very confusing gap.

Activity 2 Interpreting Creative Commons licences Allow about 20 minutes

Figure 4 Creative Commons logos

View description - Figure 4 Creative Commons logos This video ‘Creative Commons Kiwi’ explains the four different symbols you may find on a Creative Commons licence, and the six possible combinations of these. This page also provides explanations of each of the licences if you want to use a text version. Make your own notes on the four symbols and six combinations, so that you will be able to refer to them in the future to identify what you are permitted to do with shared resources you find online. Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 2 Interpreting Creative Commons licences Now, thanks to Creative Commons licences, when you find materials on the web that you would like to use in your online teaching, you will be quickly able to tell whether you can reuse the item, whether you can modify it, whether you can use it to make money, and whether you need to apply an identical licence onto your own resulting work.

2.2 Evaluating open resources

Figure 5 Do the materials fit the bill?

View description - Figure 5 Do the materials fit the bill? The next consideration you need to make regarding materials you have found on the web is to evaluate the quality and relevance of the material. In many cases, OER are as rigorous in their production as any other educational resource. They may be shared by some of the best educators in the field, or they may have been the product of collaboration or feedback from educators worldwide. But there are, as yet, no common standards or guidelines for assessing the quality or accuracy of OERs. A recent EU report concluded that, as yet, there are few national policies or guidelines concerning the validation or certification of OER (Cedefop, 2016), let alone multinational or global standards. The first step in this process is to use your subject knowledge to check the accuracy of knowledge claims made in the resource. In

academic papers, for example, knowledge claims are often found in a distinct ‘Findings’ section, and may be repeated in the conclusion of a report. Are any items presented as facts, to the best of your knowledge, true? Are attributions made to the kinds of experts whose names you would associate with that field of work? Supporting evidence should usually accompany each knowledge claim – a knowledge claim should be backed up with a response that can be used to answer the question ‘How do we know that?’ In addition to checking the resource for its factual accuracy, you should also check for accessibility. We will look at this in more detail next week, but for now, it suffices to say that any OERs that you choose to use will need to be suitable for all of your learners (both current and future learners) and whatever needs they may have. If the resource has not been made accessibly, it must come with a CC licence that enables you to modify it, so that you can add accessibility features. If the licence says no editing is allowed, then if it is not accessible, it’s probably not going to be useful to you. It could also be important to evaluate how the form and content of a resource fits with the rest of the teaching. For example, an OER in the form of a web-based short course could be combined with a weekly class to create an opportunity for blended learning. Equally, an OER might use different terminology or introduce different concepts to the student from an existing core text. It could be important to be aware of this and respond in order to ensure a good experience for the learners. The ability to modify resources, or combine them together with others, is central to OER, so this is often supported by the licences used. However, it could take substantial time and effort to make modifications in order that an existing OER becomes appropriate to a new teaching use. These revisions may include removing any inappropriate content, or creating additional content to introduce or add more detail to the existing resource (Coughlan, Pitt, & McAndrew, 2013). Therefore, another aspect of evaluating OER is to think about whether it's useful as is, which is an ideal situation, or whether it will need revisions, and if so, how those will be achieved.

2.3 Licensing your own materials

Figure 6 Sharing your materials is an important part of OER

View description - Figure 6 Sharing your materials is an important part of OER The other side of the OER story is to consider sharing some of your own online teaching materials for others to reuse. For some people there are restrictions preventing this – your employer may hold the intellectual property rights to everything you produce and may not permit learning materials to be shared in this way, or it may even be illegal in your country to upload to sites like YouTube. However, it can still be a valuable learning experience to follow the procedure of adding a Creative Commons licence to an item of yours, even if you just use a blank image to practise the process. The Creative Commons website makes the process as simple as possible. You simply respond to the questions about whether you want to permit others to adapt or potentially profit from your work, and your licence is automatically generated. If you can, open the ‘Help

others attribute you!’ section, which adds metadata to your item, telling other users your name, the title and date of the work, and so on. If you wish to apply the licence to a web page, the site provides code that you can copy and paste, otherwise simply right-click on the image of the CC licence the site has generated, and save it to your computer, uploading it alongside your work in whatever location you have made it available. If you share your resources for reuse, you may wish to ensure you are always attributed as the original author for the purpose of expanding your profile as an online teacher, or as a means of expanding your networks (as you learned in Week 4 of this course). You may even find ways of collaborating with others to refine your works, or to discuss your teaching resources as part of the sharing community.

3 Finding resources online

Figure 7 Another logo for OER

View description - Figure 7 Another logo for OER There are millions of OERs to be found across the web. For an individual teacher the task of finding them would be exceptionally laborious if it were not for the advent of OER repositories. These can contain the output of one project or several projects gathered together, one institution’s OERs, or a gathering of many. For example, the OpenLearn site gathers all of the OU’s open education material.

3.1 OER repositories There are many repositories of OERs publicly available on the internet. A large proportion of these showcase OERs associated with particular educational institutions or projects, but there are several repositories which aggregate material from a range of sources. Here is a list of some of them – an internet search for ‘OER repositories’ will reveal more. Solvonauts – a search engine that searches across repositories (they also provide open repository software for institutions wanting to set up their own repository of OER). MERLOT – tens of thousands of discipline-specific learning materials, learning exercises, and content builder webpages, together with associated comments, and bookmark collections, all intended to enhance the teaching experience of using a learning material. All of these items have been contributed by the MERLOT member community, who have either authored the materials themselves, or who have discovered the materials, found them useful, and wished to share their enthusiasm for the materials with others in the teaching and learning community. MIT OpenCourseWare – a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OpenCourseWare (OCW) is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity. OpenLearn – a repository of open materials produced by The Open University, who also work with other organisations by providing free courses and resources that support their mission of opening up educational opportunities to more people in more places. OpenStax – tens of thousands of learning objects, organised into thousands of textbook-style books in a host of disciplines, all easily accessible online and downloadable (note: this resource was formerly known as Rice Connexions). Saylor – nearly 100 full-length courses at the college and professional levels, each of which is available right now – at your pace, on your schedule, and free of cost.

AMSER: Applied Math and Science Education Repository – a portal of educational resources and services built specifically for use by those in Community and Technical Colleges, but free for anyone to use. Internet Archive – a library that contains hundreds of free courses, video lectures, and supplemental materials from universities in the United States and China. OER Commons – free-to-use learning and teaching content from around the world. Open Course Library – a collection of shareable course materials, including syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments designed by teams of college faculty, instructional designers, librarians, and other experts.

Google Image Search Within the settings on a Google Image Search results page, you can search for images that have been labelled for reuse. First perform your search, and when your results page shows, click on the Tools drop-down. This brings up a new toolbar of options, one of which is ‘Usage rights’ - if you click on this you can select either ‘Labelled for reuse’ or ‘Labelled for reuse with modification’ according to your preferences. (You can also select images according to size, colour and time of publication, if you wish). Your results window should refresh. Now, in theory, the images showing should be reusable. However, this does not mean that you can simply copy and paste without attribution. When you find an image in your Google results that you would like to use, click on it, and a black bar will appear, featuring the option to visit the originating site. Click this link – hopefully the hosting site will make clear what reuse licensing options apply to the image. If it does not, then you should not use that image, as simply attributing it may not be sufficient to protect you from breach of copyright.

YouTube

Beneath every video on YouTube is a ‘Show More’ link. When clicked, the licence attached to the video is revealed. Some videos have a Creative Commons licence attached (this is an option the uploader can select when putting their video onto YouTube). However, most have the default Standard YouTube Licence, which says you ‘shall not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, or otherwise exploit any Content for any other purposes without the prior written consent of YouTube or the respective licensors of the Content’. So if you wish to reuse Youtube videos that have the Standard YouTube Licence, your only course of action is to attempt to contact the uploader to gain permission. YouTube does provide a setting to filter your search results to only show videos bearing a CC licence. First perform a search for videos on the theme of your choice, then select the ‘Filter’ option. Under the heading ‘Features’ there is the option ‘Creative Commons’, which reduces your results list to only videos that have a CC licence attached.

Vimeo Beneath every video on Vimeo is a ‘More’ link. If the uploader has attached a licence to their video, the type of licence that applies will be listed here. If no licence is stated, you must assume that the work cannot be reused without express permission from the uploader, and you should try to contact them if you wish to reuse the material. You can narrow down a search within the Vimeo site to show only CClicenced videos. First perform your search using the main search box. When you have a results page, under ‘Refine By’ in the left hand column, click ‘More’. Scrolling down should reveal a Licence section where you can filter your search results according to which CC licences apply to your planned usage of the video.

Flickr Flickr makes it very clear which images you can reuse and which you cannot. When you perform a search in the Flickr website, the

most prominent drop-down filter option on the results page is ‘Any License’ which, by means of a drop-down menu, can be changed to filter results for a variety of Creative Commons options. Every image on Flickr has beneath it either a © symbol or a CC symbol, and clicking this will bring up the precise terms of use for that image. If you wish to keep in touch with developments regarding OER and become part of the community, sign up for the OpenLearn newsletter. Several courses are available from The Open University that go into greater detail about this area. More information on these courses will be provided in the course conclusion at the end of Week 8.

Activity 3 Using OER repositories Allow about 20 minutes

Pick a topic of interest to you and spend some time searching for resources on this. Try to make use of both an OER repository from the bulleted list at the top of this page, as well as one of the other sites explored above. Try to find one or two resources from your search, then take a few minutes to consider: 1. The quality of this resource: Who created it? Does it look to be accurate and well presented? Are there any reviews or information from educators who have used it? 2. The appropriateness of this resource to your audience: Does it need editing or introducing? Would it combine well with any other materials that are used? 3. The licence: Is it clear how the resource is licensed? What does this allow you to do with it? Do you need to attribute or ask for any permissions?

Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 3 Using OER repositories

4 This week’s quiz Check what you’ve learned this week by taking the end-of-week quiz. Week 5 practice quiz Open the quiz in a new window or tab then come back here when you’re done.

Summary This week you have been introduced to Open Educational Resources and the wide variety of forms they can take. You have looked at some OER repositories and started to consider how Creative Commons licensing works. One further consideration that needs to be made when utilising shared resources is their accessibility and whether it suits your learners’ needs. Accessibility is the topic of next week’s materials. Meanwhile, what has Rita made of the wealth of possibilities OER can offer her? Video content is not available in this format. View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

Week 6: Supporting learners with different needs – accessibility in online teaching

Introduction

Figure 1 Accessibility

View description - Figure 1 Accessibility It is important to ensure that your learning materials are suitable for as wide a range of learners as possible, whether they are materials you create yourself, or resources that you find online and reuse. Accessibility, usability, inclusion and universal design are all commonly used terms for ensuring that your learning materials can be used by a wide range of potential learners, including those with disabilities who may be using assistive technologies. For the purposes of this week’s materials, we use ‘accessibility’ as a shorthand. Note that this is not necessarily advocating a one-sizefits-all approach to every learning object, and that it can be perfectly appropriate to provide alternative materials or activities for some situations, as long as the overall learning objectives are met for all learners. However, effort and understanding applied to this area can save a greater amount of effort and difficulties later on, and make the learning experience better for everyone. To understand some key themes in accessibility, you will first learn about assistive technologies and the impact they have upon the way

learners interact with learning materials. You will then learn how to make the materials you use more accessible, and finally some guidance on alternative formats.

Teacher reflections We join Sarah H. again this week for her experiences of considering accessibility. She focuses on ways of working with PowerPoint to make use of its full potential for inclusive teaching: Video content is not available in this format. View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

By the end of this week, you should be able to: define assistive technology and list a variety of examples understand how to make most of your online teaching materials accessible assess the accessibility of OERs understand what alternative formats may be needed in online teaching.

1 What is assistive technology? The term ‘assistive technology’ is used in this course to refer to any technology that: makes it possible for a disabled person to use a computer makes their use of that computer more efficient enables them to access online information such as online learning materials. Assistive technology, or enabling technology, can also be used in a wider sense to refer to any technology used by disabled people to enable them to carry out a task. For example, a definition from Doyle and Robson (2002) describes it as ‘equipment and software that are used to maintain or improve the functional capabilities of a person with a disability’ (p. 44).

Figure 2 This word cloud, produced for Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL), symbolises the freedom given through libraries in developing countries that enable access to assistive technologies (Ball, 2012)

View description - Figure 2 This word cloud, produced for Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL), ... Assistive technologies can facilitate access to teaching material by bridging the ‘access gap’ between the teaching material and the learner. The materials may not have to be altered if it has been designed appropriately, and if the learner can access them using suitable assistive technologies. There is often a learning curve associated with becoming skilled in their usage, and this should always be borne in mind. Whilst assistive technologies may make the difference between a learner having access to learning materials or having none, they may not completely remove all barriers or provide the same experience that other learners are getting. For learners to interact with online learning materials, the kinds of assistive technology they may need to use include technology that facilitates: access to a computer and the internet access to and manipulation of text access to and manipulation of sounds and images. Assistive technology includes hardware such as scanners, adapted keyboards or hearing aids, and software such as text-to-speech or thought organisation software. Assistive technology is often associated with high-tech systems such as speech recognition software, but it can include low-tech solutions such as arm rests or wrist guards (adapted from Banes and Seale, 2002).

1.1 Types of assistive technology There are many types of assistive technology. Some common tools that you may encounter include: Display enhancement tools. These might be used to adjust colour combinations on screen, or to magnify text or particular areas of the screen, or to make the mouse cursor more obvious, amongst other things. Audio tools. These might be used by learners to read text from the screen aloud (also known as text-to-speech), to translate or define key words, or to record contributions or feedback. It is important to note the distinction between text-to-speech tools, which require the learner to select the text to be read and are commonly used by people with dyslexia or a degree of vision impairment, and the much more complex screen readers. Screen readers. These tools read everything presented on screen, as well as navigation options and menus, and are used by people who are blind or severely vision impaired to operate their computer, as well as to read on-screen text. They can take a long time to learn to use, but when a user is expert they can often listen to items being read out at a much greater speed than regular speech. Writing tools. These may help learners with spelling or sentence construction, or may help students who cannot use a keyboard to enter text by other means. On-screen keyboards can help learners to enter text by using a switch or pressing the space bar, alternative entry tools can help learners to enter text by nudging a mouse or even using their tongue to open or close an airpipe, and speech recognition tools can help learners to enter text by speech. Planning tools. These can include tools that create thought maps (and convert these to nested lists, or vice versa), as well as tools for annotating the screen, as reminders or planning aids.

Assistive technologies are not always separate items to be purchased by the user. Often mainstream technologies have assistive technology features built in. Operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS contain built-in assistive technologies, such as display enhancement tools and audio tools. Word processing software often includes tools such as magnification controls, navigation via headings, or readability checkers, and modern internet browsers also contain a range of assistive features. Because these are readily available, you can try some of these tools yourself to get a sense of how they work.

Activity 1 Discovering assistive technology built into internet browsers Allow about 15 minutes

Watch the video on Accessibility and web browsers to see an overview of browser-based assistive aids. Make a note of any that you were previously unaware of. Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 1 Discovering assistive technology built into internet browsers It is important to be aware of the kinds of assistive technologies learners may have available to help them to access online education. However, this is only one part of the story. In order to minimise barriers to disabled learners, you must also deliver learning materials that are accessible. Often, assistive technologies will only function optimally if learning materials have been designed with accessibility in mind. This is what we will consider in the next section.

2 Making your online materials accessible

Figure 3 It is important that course material is accessible to all learners

View description - Figure 3 It is important that course material is accessible to all learners There are many types of disability, and many ways in which people with disabilities interact with learning materials. Therefore, generalising about all the considerations that need to be made for learners with particular impairments or conditions is tricky. However, there are common aspects of achieving accessibility in learning materials. You should ensure that: materials are clear, consistently organised and explanatory information contained in visual elements (e.g. images, video, and text) can be accessed without needing vision information contained in auditory elements (e.g. video or sound clips) can be accessed without needing hearing display elements can be modified to suit the users needs (e.g. magnification, colour contrast) tasks can be performed without needing rapid text input skills, manual dexterity, or visual acuity.

Meeting these requirements does not mean that you have to avoid using elements that some people cannot access (such as video, for example), but rather that you should ensure that the information that you are conveying can be accessed by everyone, albeit in different ways or through different media.

2.1 Ensuring clarity of navigation and appearance Colour Do not use colour alone to convey meaning. For example, if a completed task in your course has a green dot beside it, and uncompleted tasks have red dots, that is going to be problematic for a colour-blind learner. Changing this to a green tick and a red cross may resolve this issue.

Headings and structure Structure headings using style features built into the tools you use. These exist in Learning Management Systems, Word, PowerPoint, and other common tools for creating content. Using heading styles when creating text documents enables screen reader users and dyslexic learners to navigate the document more easily (for further guidance see the following ‘Applying headings’ clip).

Presentation slides Using the built-in slide designs in PowerPoint ensures that all text content is accessible to screen readers. Text that is displayed in the ‘Outline View’ of the presentation is normally accessible to screen readers, but text added via additional text boxes is generally not accessible. Hence it is good practice to copy all text from each slide into the Notes field (which can be accessed by screen readers) and to add into the Notes field descriptions of any visual elements of the slide as well. PowerPoint slides read by a screen reader are read in the order the content was added to a slide, which sometimes is not the proper reading order. The reading order can be changed in PowerPoint to fix this issue.

Text alignment Where possible, ensure text is left-aligned (meaning the right edge is uneven) rather than justified (where both left and right edges are uniform). If text is left-aligned, the letter and word spacing is optimal for readability. However, if text is justified, uneven spacing between letters and words can significantly reduce readability, especially for some people with dyslexia, who can find they ‘slip’ up and down in the ‘rivers of white space’ that appear in justified text.

PDFs Avoid using PDFs in which the text is saved as an image – this cannot be read by screen reading software. You can test whether the text is saved as an image by trying to select a few words with the cursor – if words are not individually selectable, then the text is probably an image. Screen reading software therefore cannot detect any words, and therefore will not read the PDF contents. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software can be used to attempt to extract text from an image, but the process is rarely completely accurate and so you need to examine the output of the OCR software and correct any errors. PDFs generated from accessibly structured Word or PowerPoint documents (see ‘Headings and structure’ and ‘Presentation slides’ above) are usually also fairly accessible (Devine et al., 2011). The University of Washington has produced some useful guidance on creating accessible PDFs from Word documents.

Figure 4 Clarity of navigation enhances user experience

View description - Figure 4 Clarity of navigation enhances user experience

Layout and organisation Use clear, consistent layouts and organisation schemes for presenting content. Initially post regular announcements on how to get started, and orient students to the course. Direct students to key areas – contents/overview sections, schedules/timetables, assessment guidance. Organise your course in a linear fashion so a student knows that if they navigate from the first page in the course content to the last, they will have covered all of the required course materials, assignments and assessments. In text documents (Word, PDF, etc.) content needs to be laid out in a very linear fashion to be accessible, so don't use textboxes (in MS Word, Insert > Textbox) or tables to lay out a document. Tables should only be used for tabular data.

Tables If tables do not have an approximately equal number of rows and columns, they should be oriented ‘tall and thin’ and not ‘short and wide’. This is because screen readers read a table linearly, row by row. If your table has more than two columns and more than ten rows, it’s good practice to repeat the column headers every 10–12 rows, just to remind the screen reader user what they are listening to. To see a few more examples and guidelines, have a look at this page produced by WebAIM, which gives some more information about ‘accessible table design’ for web pages.

Web links Use descriptive wording for link text to make each link distinct and the destination clear. So avoid the meaningless ‘Click here’, or having several links called ‘Read more’. This is because many screen reader tools offer the user an option to quickly scan all of the links on a page, so that the user can rapidly navigate through to the page they seek – however, this functionality becomes useless if all the links have generic names or if there are several with the same name.

2.2 Making visual elements accessible Provide concise alternative text descriptions of content presented within images. This should focus upon the purpose of the image in relation to the teaching points, rather than a description of every visual feature. The alternative text could therefore be different for the same image used in two different ways. For example, Figure 5 below shows the locations of principal cities and rivers of France. It might carry two quite different alternative text descriptions depending on the purpose of its usage:

Figure 5 Consideration of the teaching point is important when writing alternative text descriptions

View description - Figure 5 Consideration of the teaching point is important when writing alternative ... (in a lesson on rivers) A map of France, showing that the catchments of four large rivers (the Seine, Loire, Garonne and Rhône) drain more than three quarters of France’s mainland. The Seine drains largely north-westward into the English Channel, the Rhône southward into the Mediterranean, and the Loire and Garonne largely westward into the Atlantic Ocean. The Garonne’s headwaters are to be found in the foothills of the Pyrenées, the Rhône has its source in the Alps, the Loire originates in the Massif Centrale and the Seine rises in the Langres plateau in the north-east of the country. (in a lesson on settlements) A map of France, showing that five of France’s twenty largest cities by population are seaports. Le Havre, Brest, Marseille, Toulon and Nice are all seaport cities, while Paris and Bordeaux are principal inland ports. All the rest of the twenty largest cities are situated on or near rivers, but are not considered major port cities. Note that the first description makes no mention of the cities shown, whilst the second makes no mention of specific rivers. When creating alternative text it is important to focus only on the information the learners need to know about the image, and to not clutter your description with unnecessary information. By doing this, the alternative text also becomes a valuable learning aid for all learners, as you are distilling for them the key elements of the image. It is not always necessary to add alt text for an image – if the image is purely decorative and serves no educational purpose, you do not need to add alt text. However, if you are creating a web page you must still give it a ‘null alt tag’ (alt=””) to ensure screen readers know they should skip it, otherwise they will say ‘image’ and the learner will be left wondering what it was. It is also necessary to make the content of video or animations accessible for those who cannot see it. Usually this is done by the provision of a transcript. Depending on the nature of the video

content, it may be appropriate for the transcript to simply replicate any spoken words in the video (dialogue, commentary and so on). However, sometimes it will also be necessary to add descriptive detail of a similar nature to the alternative text for images. This is especially vital when the spoken element does not cover key visual information (for example if someone is demonstrating a technique and does not describe every step they make because they believe the audience can see what they are doing). Ensure that the playback of visual elements can be controlled by the user – you can imagine how difficult it is to listen to your screen reader interpreting what is on a web page at the same time as a video begins automatically playing and you cannot stop it.

Activity 2 Describing images for those who cannot see them Allow about 30 minutes

Please note that, because of the intended learning outcome, this activity itself is inaccessible to screen reader users. However, we expect that they are already familiar with the concept of alt text which is explored here.

Figure 6 Describing images

View description - Figure 6 Describing images The image shows a section of a typical city centre street in Kandy, Sri Lanka. The vehicles with the black soft roofs are known as ‘tuk-tuks’. Draft some alternative text that might be suitable for the following uses of the image: i. In a discussion of the modes of transport commonly used in Kandy. ii. In a discussion of the kinds of businesses one may find together on a typical Kandy street. iii. In a discussion of the state of repair of buildings on a typical Kandy street. Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 2 Describing images for those who cannot see them

2.3 Making auditory elements accessible There are two common ways to make audio elements accessible to those who cannot or who do not wish to listen to them. With videos, the most common technique is to add subtitles or closed captions. In some cases it may be more appropriate to provide a separate text transcript. This can work very well for audio, or for some videos such as interviews where the visual element isn’t essential to understanding the content. If the video content is more complex, remember that it may be difficult to read a transcript and watch a video at the same time. In either a transcript or subtitles, it can be important to describe any meaningful sounds, not only the spoken words. Be aware that if you use an automatic captioning tool, such as the one provided by YouTube, you must check and edit the captions it has provided to ensure accuracy. The output created by these tools is often inaccurate but can be improved manually.

2.4 Making display elements adjustable Learners may view your content through a range of different devices, screens and browsers. However, there are some common features that you can control that help to make sure the materials display in a form that is accessible to a wide audience. The first is to use as default an accessible combination of settings. So it is good practice to use a font type that has good readability (sans serif fonts are often recommended for printed materials, but online some serif fonts can be suitable if they are not cursive or uneven) and a font size of at least 12 point in text documents (and 20 point on presentation slides). Colour combinations should give good contrast (there is a free colour contrast checker which helps you assess the contrast of colour combinations – you should aim for a minimum ratio of 4.5 to 1 throughout – and for large amounts of text you should aim for a contrast ratio of 7 to 1). Avoid using flashing or moving elements unless there is a means for users to stop the movement. Also, avoid putting text over background images – this decreases readability dramatically.

Figure 7 The Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari logos

View description - Figure 7 The Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari logos The second element of ensuring the accessibility of the display of your materials is to put control into the hands of the learner. If you provide documents created accessibly, the learner will be able to apply their own preference of font, colour and so on. If you are presenting materials to be viewed in a web browser, provide links to guidance on how to use your browser to meet some of your accessibility needs and preferences (such as these resources for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari). If you are using another kind of platform to deliver your online teaching (web conferencing, LMS,

etc.), try to find out what accessibility features it has, and give guidance to your learners on how to find and use them.

2.5 Ensuring tasks can be completed without needing manual dexterity or visual acuity

Figure 8 Using key functions instead of a mouse can be easier for some learners

View description - Figure 8 Using key functions instead of a mouse can be easier for some learners Many people use assistive technology that replicates the functions of a keyboard rather than a mouse. Others cannot use a mouse accurately. Therefore, you should make sure that all content and navigation is accessible using the keyboard alone. This means that if you wish to use elements that require manual dexterity (such as drag-and-drop exercises or crossword puzzles) or visual acuity (such as wordsearch games or ‘spot the difference’ images), then it should be possible to complete these using the keyboard alone, and the mouse alone (perhaps in combination with the on-screen keyboard built into most operating systems), or you should provide alternative

activities for those who may not be able to undertake the original tasks. To test this, move your mouse out of reach, and try performing the activity using the Tab, Space, Arrow and Enter keys. If it can be achieved, add instructions for your learners advising how to do it. If it cannot be achieved, think about how to provide an alternative activity. Similarly, trial your resource using the mouse alone.

3 Checking the accessibility of materials When you are creating the learning materials that you will use online, it is a relatively simple process to ensure they are as accessible as possible (see Section 2 of this week’s materials). However, you also need to be able to assess, and if necessary adjust, the accessibility of other people’s materials that you want to reuse in your own teaching. Whilst there are automated tools available that give some indication of a resource’s accessibility (such as MS Office’s Accessibility Checker feature, PowerPoint’s Accessibility Checker feature) or web page accessibility checking tools (such as AChecker or WAVE), you must always apply your own judgement and common sense to the outputs of these tools, and use them as just a part of a more holistic assessment of the resources. There are surprisingly few guidelines available covering how to evaluate OERs for accessibility, but you might find it useful to take a look at this document ‘Rubrics for Evaluating Open Education Resource Objects’ (Achieve, 2011) which contains a variety of guidance, with Rubric VIII (pages 10 and 11 of the document) giving some useful suggestions as to what to look out for. However, this document is very USA-centric, with references to legislation and organisations that may not be applicable if you are based elsewhere in the world. OpenWashington (2017) suggest six key accessibility questions to ask when considering reusing learning materials: Is all written content presented as text, so students using assistive technologies can read it? If the materials include images, is the important information from the images adequately communicated with accompanying alt text? If the materials include audio or video content, is it captioned or transcribed?

If the materials have a clear visual structure including headings, sub-headings, lists, and tables, is this structure properly coded so it’s accessible to blind students using screen readers? If the materials include buttons, controls, drag-and-drop, or other interactive features that are operable with a mouse, can they also be operated with keyboard alone for students who are physically unable to use a mouse? Do the materials avoid communicating information using colour alone (e.g. the red line means X, the green line means Y)? It is usually fairly straightforward to adjust features like font size or colour combinations in OERs, and to add or amend alternative text for images. If you wish to use a video that does not have captions (or is not in your language), you have several options: For YouTube videos, contribute captions of your own: look on this YouTube Help page for advice (remember the advice in Section 2.3 regarding the quality of automated captions). For TED talks, contact the community of voluntary caption providers. Use a free software tool (such as Amara or Dotsub) to create your own captions.

4 Alternative formats As you have already seen in this week, some students might have difficulties with any type of media used in online learning materials. If content can be provided in a variety of alternative formats, students will not have to do their own work to transform this into something suitable for themselves before they can engage with their learning. For printed materials or inaccessible text formats, some work may be needed to create an alternative resource. This might be, for example, if the text is actually an image such as a photograph or scan – to check this, try ‘highlighting’ or ‘selecting’ the text. If it is not possible, the text is probably an image. It may be possible to use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to automatically turn text in an image into a more usable format. Always check the results of any OCR conversion for accuracy. In some cases where the text is not clear (such as with handwriting), it can be more efficient to type in the text rather than use OCR. Headings and other useful styles may also need to be added manually. If there are images or diagrams in the original resource, someone with some understanding of the subject can determine which of these need describing and can provide the descriptions. In the case of complex images, it may be necessary to produce a tactile diagram for blind students. Tactile diagrams require technical skills and some specialist knowledge. See the video ‘How to make a tactile diagram’ (Art Beyond Sight, 2009), which provides an overview of the requirements and production of this alternative format.

Figure 9 Reading mathematical symbols can be problematic for a screen reader

View description - Figure 9 Reading mathematical symbols can be problematic for a screen reader In some subjects, such as mathematics, music and chemistry, there are substantial difficulties in providing an accessible format that includes the symbolic notation. Most of the guidelines for accessibility skip over this, or assume that the amount of notation is small and can be dealt with by supplying descriptions. In fact, communicating these kinds of complex notations to people without vision is a highly specialised area and beyond the scope of this course.

Figure 10 EPUB documents can aid accessibility in a number of ways

View description - Figure 10 EPUB documents can aid accessibility in a number of ways Some online materials are offered in e-book formats such as EPUB and MOBI (for Kindle). These formats are not aimed specifically at disabled learners, but have included accessibility considerations where appropriate, so may be beneficial to some disabled students who choose to use e-book readers. Human voice recordings of text are often preferred by learners to the kind of computer-generated speech produced by screen reader software. Computer-generated voices may also have difficulty in reading out complex notations correctly. This includes subjects such as mathematics, music and chemistry, as well as those with a high number of technical terms. Recordings may be delivered in a variety of formats but MP3 is likely to be the most satisfactory to obtain a

balance of sound quality with a manageable file size. If you do not have time to make the recordings yourself, or if you do not wish to do so, there are tools available that will convert a text document into a computerised spoken-word audio file. The free web resource Robobraille will permit you to upload a text document and have it converted into a computerised voice recording, or an e-book. For audio, a transcript is the standard alternative format, and these can be beneficial to all learners, not only those who are deaf or hard of hearing. It is, however, very difficult to follow a visual medium like video and attend to a transcript at the same time. It is not the same task for a deaf person as it is for a hearing person who can at least listen and read at the same time. Students often need to make notes while watching a video, which increases the difficulty. So be aware that this alternative may not provide equity of experience for the learners.

Activity 3 Accessibility in your online teaching Allow about 30 minutes

You have already made notes in previous activities on what you want to achieve in online teaching, and what the role of OERs might be in achieving these objectives. Now consider accessibility – what will you need to do with your existing materials or reused OERs, in order to deliver optimally accessible teaching online? Make a list of six initial steps you could take fairly easily (for example ‘review my PowerPoints for added text boxes and explanation of images’, or ‘check colour contrast in reused OERs’). Again, keep your answers in a safe place, as you will revisit them. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. View comment - Activity 3 Accessibility in your online teaching

5 This week’s quiz Check what you’ve learned this week by taking the end-of-week quiz. Week 6 practice quiz Open the quiz in a new window or tab then come back here when you’re done.

Summary This week you have learned about assistive technologies and how users with impairments interact with online teaching materials. You have learned how to make your online materials more accessible, how to produce alternative versions where necessary, and how to consider accessibility requirements when searching for Open Educational Resources. Next you will look at the factors affecting the way you might make a change in your teaching, and you will start planning to move an element of your teaching online. Rita certainly has something to say about this week’s materials – let’s see how she’s getting on: Video content is not available in this format. View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

You can now go to Week 7.

Week 7: Making a change in your teaching

Introduction

Figure 1 Planning and understanding changes connected with online learning

View description - Figure 1 Planning and understanding changes connected with online learning We hope that this course might make you think of ideas for changes in your work practices. Or perhaps you are taking this course because you are already experiencing change! This week focuses on some concepts that can help you to plan or understand changes connected with online learning. You need to consider the needs of your learners with respect to their approach to technology, and how the technology and pedagogy interrelate. Understanding debates around how people use digital technology and the effects it has on them should help you to think about how you can effectively combine technology and pedagogy. We then focus on designing new or revised learning activities, and identify some tips to use when trying to make a change.

Teacher reflections This week we hear from Sarah S. about how she made a change in her teaching: Video content is not available in this format. View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

By the end of this week, you should be able to: explain the concept of technological determinism use the Visitors and Residents model to assess your students’ approach to technology in learning make changes to teaching with technologies in a systematic and informed way.

1 Changing the technology or the pedagogy?

Figure 2 How does the use of technology shape your teaching?

View description - Figure 2 How does the use of technology shape your teaching? How much difference does any technology make to how people teach or learn? There is often a tension between the significance of technology and pedagogy in online teaching. For some, the technology is merely a conduit and their focus is on pedagogy. Others prefer to utilise the possibilities that technology offers us and wait for theory to catch up. It is probably more useful to think of the two as being involved in an iterative dialogue. Technology opens up new possibilities and is used in ways that its designers never intended, which in turn drives theoretic development, which feeds back into technology development, and so on.

This view of technology, and particularly how it relates to education, is addressed by Weller (2011) in Chapter 1 of The Digital Scholar. This tension between the role of technology and pedagogy is particularly acute in online education. Many of the topics we have looked at in this course would simply not have been possible without internet technology. However we also have to consider the roles of learners and educators, and what they bring to each online education context.

1.1 Visitors and Residents The different ways in which people interact with, and perceive, digital technology are the subject of ongoing research and debate. For example, Prensky (2001) coined a distinction between ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital immigrants’. He argued that younger generations are immersed in technology when entering education and they have a different understanding and relationship with technology than the ‘digital immigrants’ who have to learn it. This idea was appealing and gained much coverage. However, its claims did not withstand scrutiny, for example Bennett et al. (2008) found as much difference within the technology use of the younger generations that were deemed to be ‘digital natives’ as there was between them and the older generations of ‘digital immigrants’. Importantly, the technology skills of the digital natives were often limited. So it looks like we shouldn’t assume that someone is confident or proficient in using technology based on their age. David White has rephrased this idea as ‘Digital Residents’ and ‘Digital Visitors’. This describes a range of online behaviours, and the same person can operate in Resident or Visitor mode for different tasks. White and Le Cornu (2011) define them as: ‘Visitors understand the web as akin to an untidy garden tool shed. They have defined a goal or task and go into the shed to select an appropriate tool which they use to attain their goal. Task over, the tool is returned to the shed. Residents, on the other hand, see the web as a place, perhaps like a park or a building, in which there are clusters of friends and colleagues whom they can approach and with whom they can share information about their life and work. A proportion of their lives is actually lived out online.’ When making changes to your practice in terms of online teaching, be aware of how much the technology is shaping your advances,

and try to analyse whether you are acting as a Resident or a Visitor, or whether you expect learners to be one or the other. You should also reflect on any assumptions you make about who will be capable of engaging with online learning, and the importance of assessing and, where necessary, developing the skills of learners and teaching to properly engage with online learning.

Activity 1 Thinking about your learners as ‘Visitors and Residents’ Allow about 20 minutes

David White explains the Visitors and Residents model in this video entitled Visitors and Residents. As you watch the video make notes on which elements you feel might apply to your learners – for which activities do you think they would identify as Residents and for which Visitors? Do you have a mix in your class – and if so in what approximate proportions? Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 1 Thinking about your learners as ‘Visitors and Residents’

2 Learning design You will have seen throughout this course that the ways in which we can design an experience for learners online differ somewhat from other forms of teaching. But can we think about this more systematically? Mor and Craft (2012) define learning design as ‘the act of devising new practices, plans of activity, resources and tools aimed at achieving particular educational aims in a given situation’ (pg. 86).

Figure 3 How we design our teaching influences how we learn

View description - Figure 3 How we design our teaching influences how we learn Learning design is an inherent part of any educator’s practice (i.e. preparing for teaching/training sessions or creating learning materials, activities and assessments). Indeed, it is so core to what educators do, that it’s often taken for granted; it’s assumed that it ‘just happens’. In other words, ‘design’ is so embedded in a practitioner’s practice that it tends to be implicit – not formally

articulated or externalised for others, apart from at a relatively superficial level in the module syllabus or lesson plan. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in trying to better understand educators’ design processes and to make them more explicit. There are a number of reasons for this, but three are particularly worth noting. 1. In order to ensure the quality and robustness of educational innovations, they need to be reviewed from various perspectives – technological, pedagogical, and others. The sooner the innovations are reviewed, the easier it is to make any necessary adjustments. By sharing and discussing innovations at the design phase, we can avoid costly mistakes at later stages of production. 2. By making the design process explicit, it can be easily shared with others, which means good practice can be transferred. 3. The variety and complexity of resources and technologies that are currently available means that teachers and trainers need clearer guidance to help them find relevant tools and resources, as well as support in incorporating these into the learning activities they are creating. However, it should be noted that the term ‘learning design’ is not without controversy and overlaps to some extent with other terms, such as ‘instructional design’, ‘curriculum design’ and ‘module design’. Mor and Craft's definition represents one possible interpretation, and indeed their paper discusses alternative definitions proposed by others.

Activity 2 Employing a Learning Design approach Allow about 40 minutes

1. Visit The Open University’s Learning Design resources site. 2. Read the home page, and then browse the Downloads list to see if there are any resources there that may be of interest to you. 3. Make some notes about which tools you could apply, and how you think you might do this to create or redesign some teaching for online learning. For example, you could plan a workshop activity with others, or use the resources as a guide to your own design work. Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 2 Employing a Learning Design approach

3 Making the change This week you have looked at a way to view your learners (the Residents and Visitors model) and the role of technology and learning design in your plans to move your teaching online. The final section of this week’s materials will focus on tips for making changes in your teaching practice. In their ‘Beyond Prototypes’ report, Scanlon et al. (2013) offer four ‘recommendations for researchers’ which might be relevant to you when designing your move into online teaching: Research teams should identify, at an early stage, the steps required to enable scalable and sustainable implementation beyond prototypes, so as to enhance learning. Researchers need to engage fully with the individuals and communities that will play a role in the implementation process. Research teams should consider adopting Design-Based Research (DBR) as a systematic but flexible methodology for research-led innovation, based on collaboration among researchers and practitioners in real-world settings. The interim and final results from design-based studies should be systematically shared with other researchers so that the process of innovation can be compared, expanded, and continued over time. They should also be widely disseminated to policy makers and practitioners, through events such as ‘what research says’ meetings. DBR, mentioned in the above recommendations, is a methodology that may be of particular interest when designing changes into education practice. Some of the core characteristics of design-based research in education are that it implements iterative changes in real-life practice, testing out new pedagogical theories or frameworks for conceptualising learning. If you would like to learn more about DBR, this video ‘Design-Based Research’gives a short introduction.

3.1 Hints and tips From our experiences as practitioners and researchers in educational technology, we think the following guidance could also be useful when embarking on or managing change: Start small and start now. The reason for this is that over time you may start to overthink your planned change, the objectives may become lost in potential issues or you may start to vacillate between various potential changes as to which one to focus on first. Pick something small that you can pilot and see the results from, plan it, and do it! Plan. Set out all of the details. What new online teaching technique will you try? With which group of learners? Covering which topic? By which date must you be ready? What will be your fallback plan to ensure the learning objectives are met if your trial fails to deliver? How will you evaluate the successes and failures of your attempt? (See next week’s materials for further coverage of evaluation). As time goes by and you gain confidence in trying new teaching ideas online, you can be more flexible and formulate less rigid plans, but at the start of your journey, planning will make you feel more secure in your actions. Get permission. If you work for an education provider, you may need to get approval for your proposed change. Take time to prepare, give the approver all the information they may need, explain the benefits as well as the risks, and show that you have thought long and hard about the change and its potential benefits for you and your learners. If permission is not granted, demand feedback, and adjust your proposal before seeking approval again. Don’t be a perfectionist.

With any changes to your teaching, adjustments will need to be made. Observe what works and what doesn’t work, modify, and try again. Reflect honestly. Reflect on what you've learned, reflect after further reading, reflect after discussing it with students or colleagues, then reflect after giving it a try. This will be covered further in next week’s materials. Collaborate. Share your initial attempt, and your reflections upon it, with colleagues or networks. They may spot additional adjustments that you can make, and will be better placed to identify objectively the positives in a change that you feel did not go well. Listen to your learners. Ask the learners for their impressions of what you tried. Often they will see the positives of ‘trying something different’ even if it didn’t go as you'd hoped. Learn from failures. Some changes work, some don’t. Sometimes the technology fails, sometimes the pedagogy is not a good fit, sometimes external factors have an influence. But just because something goes wrong, don’t lose your enthusiasm and curiosity in online teaching. Instead, think about what you have learnt and how that will make your next steps better. Celebrate success. It may be a small change, but if it works, allow yourself to enjoy the success. Share your story with colleagues and your networks. Build upon your success to try something else or to repeat the first change in a different context. If you are still struggling to pin down exactly what actions to take to begin your online teaching journey, this blog post by Mooney et al. (2012) might offer some useful suggestions, as might this article by Sharrar and Bigatel (2014).

4 Analysing your practice and scope for change It is now time to focus on your own practice.

Activity 3 Analysing change in teaching practices Allow about 60 minutes

1. Think about the teaching practices that you are familiar with (i.e. not just your own practice) in your organisation over the last five to ten years. 2. Make some notes in response to the following questions: a. How do you think teaching practice has changed? b. How significant have the changes been? c. Which technological developments do you consider to have been the most important? Why? d. Which aspects of practice haven't been impacted strongly by technology? Why might this be? 3. Now think about your own practice, relative to the general teaching practices you thought about in questions 1 and 2 above. How has your practice changed? Which technological developments have been the most important? 4. Finally, think about what you want to change in your own teaching practice with respect to online teaching (refer to your relevant notes from previous weeks). How will technology play a role in your online teaching in the near future? What technological developments would you like to happen to support your online teaching even further? Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 3 Analysing change in teaching practices

5 This week’s quiz Check what you’ve learned this week by taking the end-of-week quiz. Week 7 practice quiz Open the quiz in a new window or tab then come back here when you’re done.

Summary This week you have been introduced to the concept of technological determinism and the Visitors and Residents model of technology familiarity. You have investigated learning design, and have started to plan your move into online teaching. In the final week of the course, you will explore the evaluation of online teaching and how to assess the effectiveness of changes to your practice. Let’s check in with Rita and see if she’s ready to move into online teaching now: Video content is not available in this format. View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

You can now go to Week 8.

Week 8: Evaluating changes and enhancing practice

Introduction

Figure 1 Licence to try!

View description - Figure 1 Licence to try! In this final week, we will explore ways to monitor, evaluate and analyse your teaching online. Whereas face-to-face teaching often relies on direct observation of students to evaluate their behaviour, some of the ‘action’ in online teaching is not as readily visible. However, teaching online offers opportunities to use data and to engage with learners in ways that are more easily embedded than they could be in a classroom context. For example, online teaching can harness the teacher’s and

learners’ ‘footprints’, which are captured as data in the online realm. This provides opportunities to make greater use of data about the learner’s behaviour and performance. Learning management systems can log data such as attendance in tutorials, quiz responses, views of material, time spent on particular activities and more. The field known as ‘learning analytics’ has been built around understanding the potential of working with such data, including its challenges and risks. It is a complex field that is still developing, but you will start this week with an insight into how learning analytics can be a valuable tool for you. Gaining feedback and reflecting on practice is important for both teachers and learners, and this is another area where teaching online offers its own opportunities. We will therefore describe some common mechanisms for feedback and look at some strategies to encourage reflection through activities embedded into the learning. You should also develop the ability to enhance your practice of online teaching. To help you with this, we will explore the notion of conducting ‘action research’ as a practitioner.

Teacher reflections Let’s see what Sarah H. has to say about evaluating her own online teaching: Video content is not available in this format. View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

By the end of this week, you should be able to: understand how learning analytics can be used to evaluate learners’ behaviour be able to gather and understand student feedback apply some strategies for embedding reflection in your online teaching plan an action research project for scholarship that seeks to improve your online teaching.

1 Learning analytics

Figure 2 It’s important to analyse and reflect on your teaching practice

View description - Figure 2 It’s important to analyse and reflect on your teaching practice There are a number of different methods that we can adopt to evaluate online teaching. Oliver (2000) provides a detailed overview of some of these methods, including: online synchronous focus groups (Cousin and Deepwell, 1998) web-based questionnaires (Phelps and Reynolds, 1998; Taylor et al., 2000) creation of an online feedback discussion area (Taylor et al., 2000). Oliver goes on to summarise the general difficulties with the above methods, which can be grouped into two main themes: the processes are largely ‘uncontrolled’ and feedback can be unfocused or anonymous; and methods for evaluating this kind of data are still developing, with different approaches leading to different conclusions.

Learning analytics offers an alternative to these methods of gathering feedback and reports from learners. These approaches instead make use of the data left by learners and teachers as they act: their ‘trace data’. These can tell us when learners join courses, when and how they engage with online activities, view pages, borrow resources from the library, set or complete activities or assessments, and so on. Any interaction with a web-based system can be tracked, and this data could be used to better understand what learners and teachers do. The widespread use of virtual learning environments (VLEs) – also known as learning management systems (LMSs) – has meant that educational institutions now deal with increasingly large sets of data. Each day their systems gather more personal data, systems information and academic records. Learning analytics is a field of innovative research, but it is increasingly something that many educators and institutions make use of through new tools, dashboards and reports, using online data to investigate user activity. It helps to answer questions such as: How many people visit the website / online learning materials? When do they visit / interact? Which links are popular? How many people complete the activities? Answering the questions posed above could involve analysing large data sets from VLEs and other technologies used for learning. Learning analytics can go one step further by providing actionable insights – they take trace data from educational settings and suggest, prompt or initiate actions to improve learning and teaching. You may have heard the term ‘big data’ used in discussions of technology. It is used in a lot of different ways, but essentially means that the dataset is very large and also very complex. Because of this, it may not be possible to use a simple, traditional approach to data processing and analysis. Learning analytics of the behaviours of large numbers of students can easily fall into the category of big data. But equally, you might look at the behaviour of one class of students over a course and find that useful insights can be gained without advanced techniques and tools.

For example, in an online forum discussion associated with a particular online module or course, a VLE could capture a range of forum data, including: who accessed the forum when they did this how long they stayed what operating system they were using how many words they added. Any of these data could be used to create analytics. However, only some of these analytics would be useful to teachers. It is not possible to identify which analytics will be most useful without knowing something about how the forum is being used. The presence of a learning design should identify the purpose of the forum in relation to learning outcomes. This makes it easier to decide which analytics to use.

Activity 1 What can we learn from learning analytics? Allow about 45 minutes

Professor Bart Rienties of the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University has played a leading role in research and practice around learning analytics. Here he is giving his inaugural lecture on the subject in January 2018. His talk introduces some of the findings from learning analytics research at the OU, and some of the ways in which this provides insights for our teaching. Watch the video, and as you do so, make notes about what kinds of learning analytics you would like access to regarding your own teaching. When moving your teaching online, are there any of these kinds of learning analytics that you could begin to collect? How might you do this? Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 1 What can we learn from learning analytics? If you are interested in finding our more about learning analytics, you may like to read Ferguson (2012) and Long and Siemens (2011) as well as Jisc’s Code of Practice for Learning Analytics (Sclater and Bailey, 2015).

2 Feedback and reflection

Figure 3 Listening to the feedback from your learners is an important part of the teaching process

View description - Figure 3 Listening to the feedback from your learners is an important part of the ... Student feedback is often collected in both online and face-to-face education settings. In online learning, you may embed a feedback survey into the learning management system. You may also want to use forums or email to provide a different means for feedback to be received, or to direct students to fill in your survey.

2.1 Eliciting feedback This feedback can be valuable and insightful, however, be aware that a small proportion of it may be unhelpful or even abusive. Tucker (2014) studied the proportion of abusive or unprofessional feedback in a single Australian university and concluded that just 0.04% of the sample comments could be classified as abusive or unprofessional. Most feedback should at least be informative. Hopefully, some can be turned into actions. It may be worth explaining at the start of the survey that the most valuable feedback is direct, honest and specific, critiquing only actions or materials and not personal traits.

2.2 Understanding feedback Research has explored the data received as feedback from students in various ways. The findings have not always been consistent, but they do provide some useful considerations for practice. Johnson (2003), in a summary of several studies, concluded that teachers who mark more leniently are routinely rated higher in student evaluations, and that students who receive higher grades also give more favourable feedback. Centra (2003) found that more rigorous courses received lower ratings than ‘easier’ courses. Given these factors, Parker (2013) goes on to consider three means of assessing teaching effectiveness and course quality which are less likely to fall victim to these biases: evidence-based teacher self-reviews. peer observations. external reviews. If you watched the video of Professor Bart Rienties discussing learning analytics in the previous section, you might recall that research using data from The Open University does not show a correlation between attainment and satisfaction. This satisfaction data is collected through a survey delivered to students near the end of the course, but prior to the student finding out their final grade. It may be that this earlier timing of the survey removes a direct impact of grades on satisfaction. So perhaps we need to think carefully about when and how we ask for feedback. Students perceive online courses differently from traditional courses. In comparisons of online and face-to-face MBA courses, Cao and Sakchutchawan (2011) found that whilst there was no difference in success rates between students of online courses and students of face-to-face courses, the online MBA students reported lower satisfaction with their courses. Song et al. (2004) examined feedback from online graduate students and concluded that course design and time management were crucial components to successful online

learning, while lack of community and technical problems were most challenging for online learners. The design of online courses, and the ways in which instructors act, impact on the perceptions of students towards them. Kauffman (2015) gathers together a range of studies examining the success of online learning in various contexts and concludes that ‘courses should be structured around reading materials, lectures and assignments organised into units with clear learning goals in mind’. In other words, course instructors need to ensure that there is alignment of objectives with instructional methods, learning activities and assessment methods (Blumberg, 2009). Instructors should provide timely feedback and serve as facilitators of discussion and interaction just as they do in traditional courses. Courses should provide opportunities for peer collaboration and sharing of ideas in order to develop an online community of learners, rather than feelings of isolation (Song et al., 2004). Otter et al. (2013) used questionnaires to determine differences in perception between online and face-to-face courses, among students and staff. Findings showed that students perceive online courses to be more selfdirected than staff do, and that students online must be more willing to teach themselves. Students in online courses felt more disconnected from staff and fellow students than staff perceived they would feel. Students also have a lower perception of the role of the teacher in online courses than staff do.

Activity 2 Effective use of questionnaires Allow about 30 minutes

Create up to five questions that you think would provide useful feedback for you from your students. While doing this, think about the following: How would you make sure the questionnaire is not leading students to respond in a particular way? Does your institution have a standard feedback questionnaire that is given to students? If so, are there

questions that you can take from this? Is it appropriate to online teaching? What type of responses would you like? (For example, closed questions on a scale, or open comments, or a mixture of both?) How would you analyse the results? Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 2 Effective use of questionnaires

Figure 4 Reflecting on your teaching practice is important

View description - Figure 4 Reflecting on your teaching practice is important

2.3 Reflection It is important to reflect on your own practice as a teacher in order to develop. This means continually considering and questioning how you teach. Schön (1987) argues that it is useful to think about this in two ways: Reflection-in-action – thinking and responding quickly to events as you teach. In online learning this might mean, for example, checking with students if you notice that they are not responding in an online tutorial session. In order to be able to reflect-in-action, you need to maintain awareness of the situation. This might require you to regularly check on student behaviours, like whether they are contributing on forums or in tutorials. Reflection-on-action – considering what happened afterwards in a deeper fashion. For online learning, reviewing student feedback and analytics can be a good prompt for reflection-on-action. In addition, it can be valuable to consider how to include activities in your online learning that ask students to reflect on their learning. A review by Means et al. (2009) identified that ‘the available research evidence suggests that promoting self-reflection, self-regulation, and self-monitoring leads to more positive online learning outcomes’ (pg. 45). An example of this would be a short questionnaire that learners can take to represent their own view of their understanding of the subject, and how well they think they are learning. If you make it clear to the learners that you will check their responses, this can also provide you with some data, as well as being a useful part of the learning experience for them.

3 Action research

Figure 5 There are many advantages to ‘action research’

View description - Figure 5 There are many advantages to ‘action research’ Action research (sometimes known interchangeably as practitioner research) can be a great process to help you make informed choices about pedagogy and technology in online learning. This type of research is focused on solving particular problems and enhancing your practice. It is focused on doing research that is relevant to you as a teacher. It might seem daunting to undertake a research project but action research is an easy approach to get you started,

particularly because it helps you to focus on understanding and changing your practice. If you already do other forms of research, you might find that this requires some adjustment to how you think. Some key concepts of this type of research are: Teacher-initiated – it really is about using a research process to enhance and develop teaching in your context. Empowering – it supports you to be responsible for your practice and potentially to inform policies or principles used more widely in your institution. Small-scale – it is manageable and something you can fit into your schedule.

Activity 3 Making use of practitioner research Allow about 40 minutes

Read this article at EdFutures (2012) to understand more about practitioner research. As you read, think about the following questions. Afterwards, write a short response for each one: Can you think of a key issue or question that you would like to research around the potential for you to use online learning in your work? What sort of data collection method do you think you should use and why? Is there anyone you want to work with to create a community around your project? How would you design the research so that the results would be useful to you and others in a similar position? Provide your answer... View comment - Activity 3 Making use of practitioner research

4 Review, modify, repeat! Summarising what you have learned this week, here is a guide to aid your thought processes as you work on your own evaluations of online teaching: Using your responses to Activity 2 earlier this week, identify exactly which aspect(s) of your online teaching you want to evaluate. Identify from where or whom you will obtain the information you need. If using analytics, what kinds of data are particularly relevant to your objectives? How can you get hold of these, or make sure they are being recorded? How will you use the data to draw conclusions? If using feedback, which method(s) will you use? Synchronous or asynchronous forums dedicated to feedback? Dedicated questionnaires? Peer observation? If using a questionnaire, use your responses from Activity 2 earlier this week to draft some questions you might wish to use. Using your responses from Activity 1 earlier this week, identify any other relevant people with whom you might wish to work to create a community around your evaluation activity. As well as analysing the feedback received regarding your online teaching, review the value of the data you have obtained. Would any modifications to the evaluation process provide more valuable data?

5 Week 8 Quiz You can now proceed to complete your end-of-course badge quiz. This is similar to previous quizzes, but this time you will have to answer 15 questions. Remember, this quiz counts towards your badge. If you're not successful the first time, you can attempt the quiz again in 24 hours. Week 8 compulsory badge quiz Open the quiz in a new window or tab then come back here when you’re done.

Conclusion It seems fitting to end this course by talking about evaluation, but it is almost certain that any evaluation you undertake will lead you to more ideas, changes and new developments in your teaching. Well done for making it through. We hope you have found both the content and the experience of this course useful. Taking your teaching online can be daunting, but completing this course will have given you insights that enable you to take on the challenge and create exciting new opportunities for your learners. If you wish to explore Open Education further, take a look at The Open University’s MA in Online and Distance Education. Before you move on, let’s pay one final visit to Rita. Time has moved on since she completed this module, and she has now had four months to try taking her teaching online: Video content is not available in this format. View transcript - Uncaptioned interactive content

Next steps If you would like to take your study of this subject area further, you may be interested in the following courses: H880 Technology-enhanced learning: foundations and futures The Online Educator: People and Pedagogy

Tell us what you think Now you've come to the end of the course, we would appreciate a few minutes of your time to complete this short end-of-course survey (you may have already completed this survey at the end of Week 4). We’d like to find out a bit about your experience of studying the course and what you plan to do next. We will use this information to provide better online experiences for all our learners and to share our findings with others. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.

Your notes Week 1 Not available in this format. Not available in this format. Not available in this format. Not available in this format. Week 2 Not available in this format. Not available in this format. Not available in this format. Not available in this format. Week 3 Not available in this format. Not available in this format. Not available in this format. Not available in this format.

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Acknowledgements This free course was written by Tim Coughlan, Simon Ball and Leigh-Anne Perryman. Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence. The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this free course: Course image: © @bryanMMathers

Week 1 Figure 1: © @bryanMMathers Figure 2: © Maksym Kozlenko https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en Figure 3: Tumisu/404 images, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en Figure 4: Soniachat8, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en Figure 5: Denise Krebs, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Activity 2 Video: Engaging and motivating students; Australian Learning and Teaching Council, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Activity 3 Video: Flipped classrooms © MADdraw Productions

Week 2 Figure 1: taken from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/yaccesslab/15569376326; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ Figure 2: CDC/Amanda Mills, from Public Health Image Library (Website), https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en Figure 4: © R. R. Puentedura, The SAMR Model, image file by Lefflerd, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en Video: Learning Objects: © learnIT2teach

Week 3 Figure 1: @bryanMMathers Figure 3: Jami (Wiki Ed), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/bysa/4.0/deed.en Figure 5: geralt, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en Figure 6: geralt, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en Figure 7: mohamed_hassan, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en Figure 8: tiffanytlcbm, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en Figure 9: Nick Youngson, Alpha Stock Images, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Figure 10: @bryanMMathers Video: Activity 2: Flipped Teacher Training / Youtube.com Actitivy 1: Video: Aligning Text; © JISC; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a_VZVOEQDc Activity 2: Video: Flipped Teacher Training; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuA8fPCHu9c Activity 4: Infographc: taken from: http://www.edudemic.com/ateachers-guide-to-social-media; diagram provided by Online Colleges

Week 4 Figure 1: @bryanMMathers Figure 2: geralt, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en Figure 3: maxpixel, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en Figure 4: geralt, Pixabay, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en Figure 5: geralt, Pixabay, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en Figure 6: Figure 6: OpenClipart-Vectors, Pixabay, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en

Week 5 Figure 1: @bryanMMathers Figure 2: 2012, Jonathas Mello ; Licensed under Creative Commons CC-BY; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Figure 3: Libby Levi for opensource.com;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ Figure 4: (Activity 2): progressor; Pixabay; https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en Figure 5: 472301; Pixabay, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en Figure 6: @bryanMMathers Figure 7: Public domain; taken from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OER_Logo.svg Activity 1: Video: OER Introduction 11: Brendan Walsh; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Activity 2: Video: Creative Commons Kiwi; Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand, The video was made with support from InternetNZ and is a project of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Produced by Mohawk Media

Week 6 Figure 1: © @bryanMMathers Figure 3: ©University of the Fraser Valley via Flickr; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Figure 4: taken from https://pixnio.com Figure 5: Produced by David Monniaux using GMT from data by USGS, IGN and INSEE Figure 6: Activity 2: Can’t locate in the Portal? Figure 7: http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/Safari; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Google_Chrome_icon_(Sept ember_2014).svg; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Internet_Explorer_9_icon.sv g; http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/Mozilla_Firefox Figure 9: Bill Burris; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ Figure 10: Bill Burris; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/bysa/2.0/ Figure 11: Gellinger/Pixabay

Week 7 Figure 1: @bryanMMathers Figure 2: Carla Gomez Monroy; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Figure 3: Nick Youngson / Alpha Stock Imageshttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Activity 1: Video: Visitors and residents; University of Oxford; JISC; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Week 8 Figure 1: @bryanMMathers Figure 2: Timur Saglambilek; https://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/ Figure 3: Gerd Altmann;https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ Figure 4: Figure 4: The Photographer; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/ Activity 3: Practitioner research: assuming this will be a link and not embedded? Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity. Don't miss out If reading this text has inspired you to learn more, you may be interested in joining the millions of people who discover our free learning resources and qualifications by visiting The Open University – www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses.

Activity 1 Thinking about synchronous and asynchronous online teaching Comment This activity is designed to help you begin to think about online teaching in your own context. One of the very first considerations in taking teaching online is to decide which elements lend themselves to synchronous learning, asynchronous learning, or both. The study by Murphy, Rodriguez-Manzanares and Barbour (2011) was conducted in a particular context: High school distance education. Some of the findings may hold true for you, but they may not be universally applicable to all students in all courses. It could be helpful to think about the practical issues, the preferences, and the benefits in your own case. For example, there could be very good practical reasons for using an asynchronous approach with your students, such as the expectations that learners will be engaging at different times. But it might be that a synchronous mode of instruction is beneficial because it offers a more immediate chance to understand and address queries. Preferences might vary and could be gathered from students if there is uncertainty about the best approach. Some students may like the way a synchronous discussion allows you to create a sense of community and engagement. Others may prefer the slower pace of an asynchronous activity where they can craft a question or response in their own time and reflect on it before sharing with others. It is often sensible to make use of both forms of teaching to provide a range of experiences and opportunities for learning. Back

Activity 2 Motivating and engaging students online Comment Teaching online brings many opportunities to use different tools and techniques with your learners. This activity should help you to begin thinking, in broad terms at this stage, about what you might like to try. The upcoming activities will look to develop your ideas further and guide you towards means of trying them out in practice. More on that to come! Back

Activity 3 Thinking about the flipped classroom Comment This activity is intended to introduce you to the concept of the flipped classroom approach, and to help you to identify the benefits it may have in your own context. The benefits suggested for the flipped classroom approach include the ability for students to work through materials at a pace that suits them, and a reduction in boredom for students who are finding the material easier. The teacher can spend class time addressing individual needs. There is a wider theme that can be found in this video and elsewhere in this course. This is the way that the role of a teacher can change in response to a change in approach using technology. In the case of the flipped classroom, the teacher is seen to become more of a ‘coach, mentor and guide’, rather than acting primarily to deliver knowledge. You might see this as a benefit, depending on your point of view on what the role of a teacher should be! Back

Activity 4 Starting to build your plans for teaching online Comment This is the first in a series of activities that appear throughout this course, helping you to develop a plan for taking your teaching online. This first step will give your plans a starting point. You may find it helpful at this stage to keep a range of options available, perhaps listing several ideas for each point. You could narrow these down to a single plan a little later. Back

Activity 1 Challenging preconceptions about online teaching Comment Often teachers have preconceptions about teaching online and what they or their learners may ‘lose’ if they take their teaching online. This week’s material and activities are designed to help you to separate perceived advantages and disadvantages of teaching online from the real ones, as applied to you in your own context. Rather than being a simple binary choice, there are lots of options and ways of tailoring online teaching to any context. So it is important to be aware of key concepts and types of tools, consider what is known about these, and to have an approach that allows you to trial ways of teaching online and to understand the results. The course will help you to develop in each of these areas. Searching the web for ‘principles of effective online teaching’ brings up many different takes on the topic, each slightly different. On the following pages you will find a summary of some of the key principles that almost always feature in these lists. They have been gathered from a range of sources but have been inspired in particular by Cooper (2016) and Hill (2009). Back

Activity 2 How do educational theories match with your teaching? Comment As a teacher, you are probably familiar with these theories already, but it can be helpful to take a step back and look at your teaching with a critical eye. This activity should help you to identify where you draw on the theories, which, as you move through the course, should help you to decide where the theories will play a role in your online teaching. Back

Activity 3 Learning objects and your own teaching Comment This activity should help you to start thinking about resources you already use, and how they might work in online teaching. If you completed this exercise quickly, you might find it helpful to go on to perform a brief audit of all of the learning objects that you currently use, so that you could consider repurposing any or all of them in your future online teaching. Back

Activity 4 Building learning objects into your plans for teaching online Comment Here you are building on your responses from last week, to move your plan for online teaching another step forward. It is important that you consider not only the learning objects you may wish to reuse, but also how you might use them, both pedagogically (part 3 of the activity) and in terms of how the technology might help you to deliver them (part 4). Back

Activity 1 Demonstrations of screencasting Comment Screencasts can be very effective for explaining or demonstrating certain concepts or topics. This activity should prompt some thoughts about elements of your own teaching that might make good subject matter for screencasts. The videos show some different approaches that can be taken and screencasts vary depending on the subject matter. If you think there is potential then we recommend trialling some of the software listed above as this can be a very powerful tool. A related approach of sharing the screen during a ‘live’ video call is possible using many modern video conferencing tools. However, if this is not recorded it would not be available for later use in the way that these screencasts are. Back

Activity 2 The potential for lowcomplexity uses of video Comment We really want to get across the idea that video does not need to be an expensive, high-tech venture. This activity is designed to demonstrate how achievable it can be for many teachers, and to help you to think about how it might be useful in your own online teaching. Back

Activity 3 Incorporating technologies into your plans Comment As you build your plans for online teaching, you should already have some ideas of the kinds of technologies that you could use to deliver your teaching online. This activity helps you to identify several that you will explore further initially – you can always investigate the others later on. Back

Activity 4 Thinking about the role of social media in online teaching Comment Social media tools can be useful in teaching, even though they may require careful implementation. This activity is designed to get you started with thinking about how social media may play a role in your online teaching, and what factors you need to consider when implementing them. Back

Activity 5 Identifying technologies that you might use Untitled part Comment This activity should help you to develop further your responses from last week – now you should be able to match possible tools to the tasks you wish your learners to achieve online. In later weeks, you will build further upon these ideas. Back

Activity 6 Selecting tools Comment This activity should help you to develop further your responses from previous weeks – now you should be able to match possible tools to the tasks you wish your learners to achieve online. Back

Activity 1 Identifying your existing roles in networks Comment When taking your teaching online it is important to consider not only your teaching materials, but your own practice as a member of the wider teaching community. This activity should help you to identify where you could make the most of your existing connections, and how you might make new ones online. Back

Activity 2 Network weather and you Comment Networking is an activity that all teachers participate in, although often it is limited to the colleagues who work in the same organisation. This activity is designed to help you identify other avenues for networking, so that you may benefit from the ‘weather’ occurring around you if you choose to tap into it. Back

Activity 3 How do you share information with others? Untitled part Comment This activity brings forward your plans for teaching online that you have been developing over the previous weeks of this course, and weaves into them your role as a networked teacher. It should help you to identify how you could utilise the networks available to you to inform and improve your online teaching. Back

Activity 1 Why are Open Educational Resources important? Comment OERs have a great deal of value to teachers and especially to those who teach online. This activity is designed to illustrate why OERs may be important to you as you take your teaching online. Back

Activity 2 Interpreting Creative Commons licences Comment Creative Commons licences are an essential part of sharing or reusing teaching resources online. You need to be able to identify at a glance the reuse conditions attached to any learning object, and you should of course apply licences to any work you share more widely, too. Back

Activity 3 Using OER repositories Comment Hopefully you have found something that you think could be useful, but you might also have realised that for some subjects, there is a lot out there and it takes time to find the most suitable resources. Considering quality, appropriateness, and licensing issues as you search for resources will help you save time, and increase the benefit of drawing on resources created by others. Back

Activity 1 Discovering assistive technology built into internet browsers Comment Whilst it is not necessary for every teacher to become an expert in assistive aids, it is a valuable exercise to familiarise yourself with the range of tools available, particularly those available at no cost in browsers and operating systems. This activity helps to highlight some features that you may not have been aware of. Back

Activity 2 Describing images for those who cannot see them Comment Your alternative text should contain similar elements to these: i. This is a photograph of a typical city centre street in Kandy. Vehicles are parked outside a variety of shops along the street. Visible are two motorcycles, one small car, one multi-passenger vehicle and four brightly coloured tuk-tuks. This may be an indication that small vehicles that can weave in and out of traffic are popular in Kandy. ii. This is a photograph of a typical city centre street in Kandy. Buildings are packed together with no spaces in between, each only one room wide. A shop selling glass for pictures, doors and windows sits next to a shop selling leather and floor coverings. Beside this is a shop with a brightly-coloured array of children’s toys and balls hanging above the window and doorway. Next to this is a retailer of window blinds, with the neighbouring shop specialising in motorcycle parts. Finally, at the edge of the photograph is a jewellery shop. iii. This is a photograph of a typical city centre street in Kandy. Buildings are packed together with no spaces in between, each only one room wide, and two or three storeys high. Whilst the street-level shop fronts are mostly in a good state of repair, the upper levels of many of the buildings are shabbier and in need of repair. Rainwater goods are commonly dilapidated, and missing in places, and the tiled roofs that are visible are uneven and have been patched with corrugated fibreboard. Where window frames and shutters are wooden, these are starting to warp and fit poorly. The building on the right edge of the picture appears to be covered with scaffolding and blue netting. It is evident that the alternative text can be written in many different ways, so as to deliver to the learner only the details relevant to the

context of its use. Describing all of the possible details to all of the learners could waste their time and create for them a difficult task of trying to separate the relevant details from the irrelevant ones. Back

Activity 3 Accessibility in your online teaching Comment This activity is designed to help you to think about the needs of your audience, and how your learning objects or online teaching materials might work for them. Accessibility should not be viewed as an additional burden for the teacher, but as an element of quality control, ensuring your online teaching is fit for purpose, by not excluding learners with particular impairments. Back

Activity 1 Thinking about your learners as ‘Visitors and Residents’ Comment This activity is designed to help you to think about the technological skills (and needs) of your learners. The models described might help you to categorise the learners with respect to different tasks or technologies, and this in turn should help you identify how to meet their needs with your online teaching. For example, you may find that some of your learners are always present, and could be very comfortable with merging online learning activities into social media practices that are a part of their everyday life. Others may go online to do a specific task that is set for them, but will not think that they need to always be connected. You need to examine your expectations of their behaviours and be flexible to their approaches. The video places importance on not oversimplifying assumptions about the need to teach digital skills for any audience. Instead, it is important to recognise that all learners and teachers may need to develop their skills in order to fully engage with online learning. Back

Activity 2 Employing a Learning Design approach Comment Many ‘good ideas’ or ‘best practice’ resources are available online for teachers to use. This activity helps you to start thinking about the kinds of resources you might look for, and how they could be altered to fit your teaching needs. Back

Activity 3 Analysing change in teaching practices Comment As we approach the final week of this course, your plans for taking your teaching online should be starting to become more detailed. The questions in this activity should help you to incorporate technologies appropriately into your plans. Back

Activity 1 What can we learn from learning analytics? Comment For some teachers, working in an organisation may provide them with access to certain data from learning analytics. Conversely, this kind of data may not be routinely collected, or not routinely shared with teachers. This activity should help you to think about what you currently have available, and what you could gather when teaching online. The video shows some of what is possible, but also that there is a lot more potential to use learning analytics than is currently mainstream practice, particularly if we improve our abilities for data collection and analysis. Back

Activity 2 Effective use of questionnaires Comment This activity helps you to think about one specific set of data that you would like to obtain, and how you might go about it. The questions asked need to be considered very carefully in order to ensure that the data generated is useful to you. Back

Activity 3 Making use of practitioner research Comment This activity is designed to help you to combine several of the elements covered in this course. You should consider learning analytics, action research, networking and sharing, and how they could all be brought together to enable you to effectively evaluate your own online teaching practice. Back

Figure 1 Same teacher, different tools Description A drawing which shows a female figure positioned on the left, with the words ‘SAME TEACHER’ written underneath. Positioned to the right are a collection of items stacked together – a laptop, headphones, radio, hashtag symbol and a food blender (which is centrally positioned). Words ‘DIFFERENT TOOLS’ written underneath these items Back

Figure 2 Teaching where learners are present at the same time is called synchronous teaching Description Array of clocks mounted on the wall of a homeware store, all showing the same time Back

Figure 3 Giving and getting feedback from learners can be achieved both synchronously and asynchronously. Description Cartoon of three stylised people, each with blank speech bubbles above their head. Back

Figure 4 Learning online provides different challenges from learning in a face-to-face environment Description Stylised cartoon depicting the silhouettes of two people wearing headsets and working at computers. Back

Figure 5 There are many facets to online learning Description A brightly coloured array of stripes, stars and cloud shapes, bearing words in a variety of fonts, reading “We don’t just browse, click, chat or game; we invent, we design, we create, we build, we share”. Back

Figure 6 Twitter responses Description A screen grab of part of the Twitter stream for the hashtag #H818conf. One Tweet gives an opinion (Functional skills seems best embedded in the vocational subject as well as taught seperatley [sic]); a second asks a question associated with a conference presentation (Should functional skills classes be embedded in vocational courses, or better delivered discretely? Elizabeth Frost discusses); and a third proposes a relevant resource (MIT Scratch for PS pupils and OU TU100 adults - All ages can be playful creators [link to resource partially visible]) Back

Figure 1 Learning online is very mobile Description Photograph of a person’s right hand resting on the trackpad of a laptop. A mobile phone is on the table next to the laptop. Back

Figure 2 Four theories help us to understand best approach to teaching online Description A photographic image of a person working on a laptop and sat at a desk. They are positioned in the background, and slightly out of focus. Only their arms and part of their upper body is visable, from the side. In the foreground is a textbook which rests on the desk and is open with a pair of spectacles placed on the pages. Back

Figure 3 Some of the main theories associated with education Description A pentagon-shaped word cloud featuring the words Behaviourism, Connectivism, Cognitivism and Constructivism repeated many times in a variety of font sizes. Back

Figure 4 The SAMR model Description Illustration of the SAMR model. The descriptions of the four components are as given in the body text. Substitution and Augmentation are linked under the heading ‘Enhancement’ and Modification and Redefinition under ‘Transformation’. Back

Figure 1 There are a range of tools that can be used in online teaching Description This is a drawing of a bingo card with the words ‘BUZZWORD’ and ‘BINGO’ written at the top. There are a series of boxes underneath which read ‘OER’ ‘WEBCAST’ ‘SOCIAL MEDIA’ ‘COLLECTIONG TOOLS’ ‘RLO’ ‘CREATIVE COMMONS’ ‘PLN’ ‘LMS’ ‘SIMULATION’ ‘E-LEARNING’ ‘SCREENCAST’ ‘APP’ ‘MESSAGING’ ‘WEB CONFERENCE’ ‘COLLABORATIVE DOCUMENTS’ ‘VLE’ ‘BLOG’ ‘VIDEO’ ‘RSS FEED’ ‘FORMS’ ‘PRESENTATION’ ‘PODCAST’ ‘WIKI’ ‘MOBILE LEARNING’ Centrally positioned on the bingo card is the Open University’s logo. Back

Figure 2 There are many resources online that can be used for creating learning resources – just be sure to check how you can use them Description A screenshot of the results of a Google Image Search on the term ‘daffodil’. The Usage Rights dropdown menu is open, and the menu item ‘Labelled for reuse’ has been highlighted in a red circle. Back

Figure 3 Creating resources doesn’t have to be complicated Description A photograph showing two people preparing to shoot a video. One man is seated on a bench among trees, holding his mobile phone in his hands, another man stands behind two video cameras on tripods, each shooting the man on the bench from a different angle. Back

Figure 4 A screenshot of a tutorial using a web conferencing platform Description A screenshot from an online tutorial. A slide is shown, upon which participants have drawn ticks to indicate their areas of interest. Panels to the side show a list of participants (with names obscured) and a chat pane (names similarly obscured) Back

Figure 5 Personalisation Description An image of a young woman typing on the keyboard of a laptop. Behind her is a blackboard with the words ‘Hello’ ‘Hallo’ ‘Hola’ ‘Bonjour’ ‘Olá’ Back

Figure 6 Learners can adapt online lessons to suit their own needs Description A series of silhouettes, of various colours, positioned in rows. Back

Figure 7 Manage the introduction of social media into your online lessons Description A cartoon of a woman pointing to a chalkboard, upon which are the words ‘Social media’ and a variety of associated icons such as those commonly used for email, Wi-Fi and a camera. Back

Figure 8 Social media tools can give learners an easy way to communicate with each other Description A picture of a desktop computer which has an image on the screen of a sphere being held up by a hand. The sphere has the words ‘SOCIAL MEDIA’ written across the middle, at an angle. In addition, there are various social media icons and symbols spread around the sphere. Back

Figure 9 Technology changes rapidly across all sectors, including education Description A tablet resting on a wooden surface. The screen shows a word cloud in which the most prominent word is Change, with Something, Different, Process and Become also prominent to a lesser degree. Back

Figure 10 Choosing the right tool Description A drawing of four tools positioned left, and on the right is a large bolt. Words across the image read: ‘Choosing the RIGHT TOOL’ Back

Figure 1 Technology gives us the opportunity to connect widely Description A drawing of a person positioned left. To the right, is a group of 10 people making a human pyramid. There is an arrow going from the solitary person towards the group. Under the group are the words ‘Support Networks’. Back

Figure 2 People come together for all sorts of reasons – social and professional – and networks can help with this Description A finger pointing at a variety of icons on a screen. Most of the icons depict silhouettes of people in a variety of situations, including a person shrugging their shoulders, a person wearing a backpack, a person with a bicycle, a seated person reading a newspaper, and a person pointing at a flipchart. Back

Figure 3 Social networking allows you to interact however you wish, and so you can focus more on certain networks and communities, and dip into others more occasionally Description A cartoon depicting a group of people in silhouette seated around a table, with a variety of empty but brightly coloured speech bubbles above them. Back

Figure 4 Communities and networks Description A silhouette of a group of five people in discussion sitting on chairs. A few are fully engaged, the other two are in thought or looking at documents Back

Figure 5 Network weather is so called because it refers to technologies that affect us whether we use them or not, like the weather! Description An array of symbols used on weather maps, including sunshine, clouds, rain, snow and thunderstorms. Back

Figure 6 Technology allows us to form networks globally, not just with those immediately around us Description A cartoon showing the top half of the earth, with a row of brightly coloured human silhouettes holding hands standing on the globe’s surface. Back

Figure 1 Open or not? Images on the internet may be subject to copyright Description A drawing of a big colourful wheel, with the words ‘OER’ positioned in the middle. The ‘O’ makes up the central hole of the wheel. To the left is a small, grey, square rock. Back

Figure 2 The OER logo Description The globally recognised OER logo as promoted by UNESCO. The logo represents an open book whose pages turn into arms and hands reaching out from the book, next to the words Open Educational Resources. Back

Figure 3 Open textbooks Description An image of six books which appear as if they are birds flying in the sky. There is a Creative Commons logo positioned at the bottom right of the image. Back

Figure 4 Creative Commons logos Description Image showing the six Creative Commons licences in icon form. The icons are explained in the text and Activity below. Back

Figure 5 Do the materials fit the bill? Description A cartoon depicting a pen resting upon a clipboard bearing a questionnaire (no text is evident). Back

Figure 6 Sharing your materials is an important part of OER Description A drawing of a document, which has a header at the top and a picture of a person to the right. ‘My Resource’ is written towards the top of the document, and there are lines underneath which indicate words, but are not legible. There is a label attached to the document which reads ‘TO: Other Educators’ and ‘BY: Me!’ Back

Figure 7 Another logo for OER Description A logo for OER, the letters O, E and R inside thick green adjoined circles. Back

Figure 1 Accessibility Description A drawing of a man in a field, looking up into the sky at what appears to be a computer screen positioned on a cloud. The screen is positioned in the distance. To the left of the man are the words ‘Accessibility in online teaching’. Back

Figure 2 This word cloud, produced for Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL), symbolises the freedom given through libraries in developing countries that enable access to assistive technologies (Ball, 2012) Description A word cloud in the shape of a butterfly formed from a document on free and open source assistive technologies. The most prominent words are highlighted in the main text. These are ‘can’, ‘see’, ‘EIFL’, ‘tools’, ‘will’ and ‘text’. Back

Figure 3 It is important that course material is accessible to all learners Description Students use computers in a PC-lab, while an instructor stands behind one of them, guiding their activity. Back

Figure 4 Clarity of navigation enhances user experience Description A photo of a young woman with long, dark hair, reading from a tablet computer. She is smiling. Back

Figure 5 Consideration of the teaching point is important when writing alternative text descriptions Description A picture of a map which shows a segment of western Europe (mainly France). Back

Figure 6 Describing images Description The image shows a section of a typical city centre street in Kandy, Sri Lanka. There are around seven shops and parked in front of these shops are vehicles with black soft roofs known as ‘tuk-tuks’. It appears to be a clear and sunny day. Back

Figure 7 The Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari logos Description A composite graphical image comprising the logos of four internet browsers: Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari. Back

Figure 8 Using key functions instead of a mouse can be easier for some learners Description A close-up black and white photograph of part of a computer keyboard. Back

Figure 9 Reading mathematical symbols can be problematic for a screen reader Description A graphic featuring several mathematical equations, mostly only partially visible as they traverse the edge of the image, in a variety of font sizes and styles, over a background of circles. Back

Figure 10 EPUB documents can aid accessibility in a number of ways Description The internationally recognised logo for the EPUB format – a stylised lower case ‘e’ with a squared form, rotated 45° anti-clockwise and in bright green. Back

Figure 1 Planning and understanding changes connected with online learning Description A diagram-style drawing which has two main circles. One contains the word ‘PLAN’ and the other ‘SEE WHAT HAPPENS’. There is an arrow going from left circle to right circle with the words ‘TRY IT OUT’ and another arrow going from right to left with the words ‘REFLECT AND TWEAK’. Back

Figure 2 How does the use of technology shape your teaching? Description A classroom in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar. Visible are about 19 children sitting behind desks in a classroom. Each child has a small laptop in front of them, and the teacher, who is at the front of the class, is holding up a laptop at the front of the class, pointing to something on the screen. Back

Figure 3 How we design our teaching influences how we learn Description A close-up of a portion of printed text on a page, with the opening sentence being highlighted with a green pen. Back

Figure 1 Licence to try! Description A circle to the left of the illustration reads ‘PLAN’ and a circle to the right has the words ‘SEE WHAT HAPPENS’. Positioned between the two circles is a mocked up identity card with the words ‘LICENCE TO TRY’ at the top, followed underneath by a passport-size drawing of a woman (named Jill Fullerton) and another title which reads ‘ACTION RESEARCH’. There are additional words on the outer edge of the illustration which read ‘TRY IT OUT’ and ‘REFLECT AND TWEAK’ at the bottom. Back

Figure 2 It’s important to analyse and reflect on your teaching practice Description A photograph of plastic letters spelling the word Analytics. Someone’s hand is pointing to the word, beneath which is a colourful array of pencil crayons. Back

Figure 3 Listening to the feedback from your learners is an important part of the teaching process Description A cartoon of four brightly coloured human silhouettes, with two blank speech bubbles crossing over above the figures. Back

Figure 4 Reflecting on your teaching practice is important Description A marble statue of a thinking woman. The statue sits in front of a Ferris wheel in Budapest city centre. Back

Figure 5 There are many advantages to ‘action research’ Description A word cloud in the shape of a human hand. The only words featured are Action and Research, each repeated many times in many sizes and colours and at many different angles. Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript RITA

Hi, I’m Rita. I have been a teacher for some years now. I spend a lot of time thinking about how I teach, but I have never really explored how to use technology to help me teach in different ways. Recently, this has become more important to my work. I would like to be able to introduce some online elements into my teaching. I have heard about some of the key concepts like ‘flipped learning’ and ‘Open Educational Resources’, but I would like to learn a lot more about them and be able to consider how I might apply them to my own practice. I am fairly confident in terms of using basic online resources in the classroom. For example, I incorporate graphics or images from the web into my slideshows, and I stay in touch with colleagues I have met at events. I do have a Facebook page, but it is only for catching up with friends and I don’t use my real name in case my learners discover me on there. I have had a dip into some other tools like Twitter, but I could not really get to grips with how to get anything useful out of it, and I love YouTube but I have not really come up with useful ways of getting YouTube videos into my lessons.

It is a long-term objective of mine to maybe do some online teaching at some point, and free myself from the restrictions of the classroom. I am hoping this course will help me get started on that path, give me some concrete ideas for how I can use online teaching techniques in my regular work, as well as sparking some ideas for what I might do in the future. So, here goes – I will be returning every week to see how you are getting on. Best of luck to everyone. Let's get started! Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript SARAH:

I want to tell you today about how I moved my teaching online. After completing several courses offered by the Open University on online education, I started teaching for UKbased online primary and secondary school. I personally within the system teach ITCSE English and do some private tutoring as well. And there's talk of my teaching developing and expanding, and I'll be teaching A-level English shortly as well. The particular institution I work for uses a system of synchronous lessons. So the students log in at the same time as I do, and we have a class. We use software, which is called Electa. And within Electa, my students can see my prepared slides. They can hear me talk to them. I can hear them talk to me. And of course, they hear each other as well. They can write on the whiteboard, and they also have a kind of text chat, which they can use to communicate with me, and also with each other. I suppose you might call that a kind of back channel. It's available within the system. As well as using the classroom software to actually deliver the classes, there's also a VLE, which allows me to

store useful resources for my students so they can access them at any time. And we also put homework in there, and I mark from there as well. All the classes I deliver are recorded, and therefore they can be replayed by students if they've missed something or misunderstood something, or if they're ill or can't attend classes. I really, really relished the challenge of creating a lively, interactive, and engaged group of students online, and have managed that with different age groups within the school. As a teacher with a particular interest in educating students with high functioning autism, I'm constantly amazed by how teaching online kind of levels the academic- or rather, the educational playing field, so that students with these particular issues can show their actual academic abilities without worrying about the environment, which is often so unsuitable for them. And it's really been lovely to watch how many of my students have thrived in that way. They, of course, are only one group that education online really suits- it works for multiple different groups of people for lots and lots of different reasons. But yes, if you're thinking about going forward with teaching online, I would highly recommend it. I wouldn't choose now to switch back into the conventional classroom. For me, there are too many benefits and too many

opportunities offered by the kind of teaching I'm doing at the moment. Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript NARRATOR:

Every day, 7.2 million students walk into classrooms throughout the United States. These classrooms generally look the same. 30 students sit in rows of desks taking notes in their notebooks while the teacher stands at a whiteboard teaching a lesson. Regardless of ability level, each student receives the exact same information at the exact same pace. As Ms. Jackson presents this same material, the students respond differently. Tommy gets it while Allison is bored and Maria is lost. At the end of the day, these same students head home. While at home, they sit at the kitchen table doing their homework and trying to remember what Ms. Jackson said. Students like Tommy make it most of the way through the homework, while others, like Allison, find it easy and fly through it. At the same time, students like Maria get frustrated and need some extra help. Ms. Jackson recognises that students have different needs and would love to work individually with each student. But this requires time and resources that her school does not have. One solution

to this problem is the flipped classroom. Here's what it looks like. While at home, students sit in their rooms watching videos of the lesson that Ms. Jackson assigned. Tommy is still able to work at his normal pace. Allison is no longer bored because now she can use this new technology to fast forward through the easy material. And Maria is no longer frustrated because she can review the material that she didn't understand by pausing and rewinding. When she really gets stuck, she can get help from her classmates. New technology platforms like Moodle and Edmodo make it easy for her to chat online with her classmates. Just as the homework is different, the classroom is different as well. Instead of standing in front of the room speaking, Ms. Jackson walks around the room. She checks in with Tommy as he works collaboratively with some students, she pushes Allison further with some more challenging work, and she helps Maria with the pieces that she still doesn't quite get. In the traditional model, the teacher stands between the students and the knowledge. But with the flipped classroom model, the students have direct access to the knowledge, and the teacher serves as a coach, mentor, and guide, helping the students access this knowledge. The flipped classroom leverages technology in a way that lets

both Ms. Jackson and the students make the most of their time and efforts. Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript RITA

I think that I have now identified what it is that I want to do as a result of studying this course. I would like to try to move a whole course online, that I currently teach in a classroom. I teach this course to one cohort, three times a week, for one hour each time, for 12 weeks. All of my learners have internet access at home. I know that on Fridays many of them travel only to attend my class and then travel home again, so moving online should help them. What I would like to do is reorganise my teaching materials for this course, so that I can try to use a ‘flipped learning’ approach. I can see that I will need to have a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous activities. In this particular case, I don’t really want to try a ‘blended learning’ approach – I want to move the whole course online. It might be a big undertaking, but I can see some really great benefits to doing this that might not be realised if the course was only partially online. I have talked about this a little bit with my colleagues and line manager. They agree that this is a good idea, and

there will be some support, but really it is up to me to figure out how to make it work well. My learners are quite motivated already, because this is a course that they need to pass in order to take a step towards qualifying for the career they want, so hopefully they will support me and will be kind if something does not work first time the way I want it to. But at the moment all I have is an idea. I need more information to be confident about what I am planning to do. I have some ideas, but I don’t really know what tools I could use to make it happen. So… I’ll see you in Week 2! Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript LEANNE:

When I first started creating online learning objects, I was surprised at the amount of time that it took. Compared to my previous face-to-face teaching experiences, I had to dramatically change the way in which I planned for learning opportunities when taking them online. I quickly realised that the ability that you have in class to change the direction and adapt to the needs of learners quickly didn't exist, so much more thought about the different routes that students could take needed to be considered in advance. Although this felt a little daunting at first, the benefits for students soon became apparent. They could access the learning at a time, location, and pace appropriate to them as individuals. The creation of digital badges is something that has had a particular impact on my teaching practise. After being really motivated when I was awarded some digital badges myself on an online course I was completing, I decided to use them with my students. In the past I found it difficult to acknowledge and track the progress made by students online when it comes to the acquisition of skills. This was

particularly important in my context, as students were studying a practical biology course. By introducing a range of digital badges to represent the various skills developed on the course, students had a way of demonstrating the progress they made. Creating learning objects can be time consuming initially, but will save you time in the long run. I would recommend for anyone to take their teaching online in this way. Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript RITA

This was interesting. I can see now how my existing knowledge of teaching theories fits into what I want to do online, and I can also understand which technologies I will need to use. My institution has a learning management system, so I can use that to host the resources I want to use in my teaching online. I already use PowerPoint presentations and web-based resources to teach this subject in the classroom, so I should be able to reuse some of those in the online setting. But I will need to turn around some of my lessons if I want to use the ‘flipped classroom’ technique. I can already see that some of my lessons can become good learning objects, and this would allow the learners to interact with them on their own or in groups. I think the more I can develop the teaching resources to stand alone, with good quality instructions, the more successful this is likely to be. Of course, there are differences when I’m not available to offer help immediately as I am in the classroom. I will need to be prepared to also create some new learning objects, to fill the

gaps where I currently use classroombased activities. I’ve had a quick look ahead, and in the next two weeks of this course we’ll learn more about choosing technologies, and think about online networks as a source of help and inspiration. So that will help guide me. Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript RITA

I must admit that I am a little bit daunted by all of the different tools out there. But I am also quite excited at the prospect of doing some very different things with my teaching than what I have been used to doing. I think I’ll experiment with a few different tools first. Start with small steps and work up from there. I really like the idea of screencasting – that looks very effective, both for demonstrating techniques and showing learners how to navigate my course materials. I am going to investigate the tools that are out there over the next couple of days. I have already been thinking about repurposing my slide presentations, so that was already on my ‘To Do’ list. I think I might also try recording some short video clips, just using my phone or maybe my webcam, so the learners get a more ‘personal touch’ – they will know what I look like, they will hear my voice, so it will be less strange for them if they have not worked online before. Next, what I want to do is work through the table of technologies that might be used for various learning outcomes. Please bear with me for a while …

[CLOCK TICKING] … Hello again! I am delighted that you’re still there! I’m really pleased that I tried to use that table of technologies, it has proved to be a very helpful exercise for me. My learning outcomes for this course are a mixture of selfdirected learning, co-learning, giving and receiving feedback, collaboration, and oral presentation and communication skills. So I can see from the table a range of relevant activities I could try, and tools that I might use. Although there are a lot of options, I feel less overwhelmed than I did, and I can start investigating some of the possibilities now. Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript SARAH:

It's fair to point out that prior to these studies, I had absolutely no digital presence whatsoever. So I've only really dipped my toe in the water. I've tried a couple of things, which is made a real difference and have been incredibly beneficial in my teaching practise, and that's what I'm sharing with you today. I'm a music teacher, and I have a busy private practise. And I have set up a private group within Facebook for myself and for my pupils and for my pupils' parents. I use it to deal with timetabling issues, with publicising when exams are going to be, terms dates, all the nitty gritty, that's sort of practical stuff. It's been incredibly useful, because prior to this I'd have to use the telephone or send out letters, whereas now I know instantly who has read the information, and therefore I know if I need to prompt any further. I have also been surprised to find that it has created this community within my group of students. They now are doing things like sharing resources. And also, they are offering each other support for exams, congratulating each other on

their successes. And that's a nice side development from the whole thing. The second part my career is that I teach academic subjects online. And I have used for that a Twitter account to create this professional presence online. I have been astonished how useful I find that. I have discovered through having this Twitter presence, conferences which have been beneficial, I have found fellow professionals working geographically close to me. I have a particular interest in teaching students with Asperger's syndrome, or who are on the autistic spectrum, on the high functioning end of the autistic spectrum. And I have discovered all sorts of resources and people who are able to help me in my endeavours. And I am really surprised at how this network has just developed and how I'm learning constantly. I've read articles that I wouldn't have expected to have found, and therefore, my own teaching practise is much improved by this. I admit I was sceptical, but it has been really beneficial. So just two small examples of how sort of spreading your digital presence, can be really helpful. Thank you. Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript RITA

I didn’t think that I was a part of any networks or communities, but I now realise that I am. Most of this isn’t online, but the more I think about it, the boundaries between the online world and the ‘real’ world are quite blurred! I attend teaching conferences to make sure my skills are up to date, and to find out about the latest innovations in educational technology. I often meet new people at these events, people like me who are doing similar jobs and teaching in a similar way. I keep in touch with these people and others by email, on mailing lists for teachers with particular interests, and in some cases we have become Facebook friends, too. We often share new ideas, or new technologies or techniques that we have discovered, but doing it by email is always a bit of a hassle, because you’re never quite sure if you’re annoying people by including them when it’s not really their thing. I am going to ask all my teacher friends if we should set up a list on Twitter, which I admit I have not really used in the past. On Twitter, we could share things quickly and simply, and people could choose whether to engage or

not. Plus, it would keep all of our discussions in one place, so we can refer back to things easily. It would be a great way for me to share my plans for moving my course online, and to find out if anyone has done anything similar already and can give me any advice. Who knew I was part of a ‘community of practice’? But it seems that I am! Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript ANDY:

Hello. Open educational resources is something I have thought about quite a lot over the last few years. But in the area that I work in, there really isn't a lot out there. That's in business education. I've been lucky enough to work in places that are quite open in sharing resources between other members of staff. But that is only within the institution itself, and that's not really open at all. Now, I have tried to be as open as I possibly can when I've created my own learning objects. For example, I created a set of lessons for my year 10 business class fairly recently. I made sure I gave it a Creative Commons licence and noncommercial, as well, so that they can be repurposed and sold on and they remain open, which I think is really important. But before my study with the OU, licencing wasn't really something I've thought about too much, especially when creating lessons and things like that, whereas now, through my studies, I very much focus on getting visuals from- if I get them from Flickr, for example, I'll only search on Creative Commons, that type of thing. So

through my studies, it has helped me to think about licencing a bit more. Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript RITA

I knew very little about Open Educational Resources. My experience extended as far as searching for images on Google and not much more than that, although my friends and I do exchange things that we have found on the internet that have become useful in our teaching, so I guess in a way those are OERs to a degree. I have found some great materials whilst visiting some of the OER repositories. I have downloaded quite a large quantity of resources! It is going to take me a long time to sort through everything I have downloaded, but I am already certain that there are materials there that will save me a lot of time and effort when I come to creating my online teaching materials. I think I understand the concept of Creative Commons licensing so I should be able to easily see if the things I find are reusable or not. It is good to know that I am using other people’s work in an appropriate way, and that my learners can also make use of these free resources. I had never dreamed that my own materials might be useful to other people, but I have made a decision to try to share. What I plan to do is to

deliver my course one time, to one cohort, and then to make any adjustments to it that are necessary after the feedback from the first cohort of learners. When I have done that, I will apply Creative Commons licences to my work and share it. It is a scary prospect, but I think I should make an effort to give something back after I have used other people’s shared resources. Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript NARRATOR:

Considering alternative formats. In developing formats for my teaching and those of my team, I consider two factors- firstly, exploring the full range of the tools that I already use, secondly, reflecting on how I can make my teaching inclusive for a range of participants. One of the tools that I considered was PowerPoint- often used in my organisation, but not normally to its full potential. There are several points that can enable different formats for different students. Firstly, increasing the inclusivity of people who struggled with reading or have sight problems. This can be met by using the alt text, which is really useful. It can read text and descriptions of diagrams, and it can also be used by students who prefer to listen on the go because it can be easily transferable to mobile devices. The second element of format is the font and the background. And with PowerPoint, it's easily manipulated by both learner and the teacher, which is important when you're considering a whole range of students. Links to other resources can be embedded into the PowerPoint, also links to more

accessible versions of a particular page, so to make pages simpler and less busy. So on the one hand, you might want a really stimulating page for your students, but also one that can be read more easily before the session starts. And then animations and visual images can help learners who prefer a different style of learning, because a picture sometimes can save 1,000 words. Finally, it's a good place to start with PowerPoint, but there are other formats. But this one I particularly like because you can use it for preparation teaching. You can use it for both faceto-face teaching as well as synchronous online teaching or blended learning. It can be manipulated, but you can use the same content for each of those delivery methods. So I think that also engages those students who are inhibited by where they live and how they can get to their classroom. Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript RITA

I was quite apprehensive about this week’s topic. I know that there are a lot of different needs and that I could get a student with any of them, at any time. In the classroom it is not usually too difficult to adapt to whatever you are presented with, but I was worried if I did not make my online materials accessible then a student with accessibility needs might get completely stuck, without me being there to immediately resolve the issue as I would in the classroom. Now I am a little more confident. I know the common accessibility considerations to keep in mind when I create my materials and I think it is interesting that such a wide range of my learners could benefit from improved accessibility. I know that I have to write alternative text for images, transcripts or captions for videos, and alternative formats for learning materials that might be inaccessible. I have quite a few learners where English is their second language. I reckon they would like to read subtitles or transcripts of videos where the speaker is talking fast or using complicated terms, so my

accessibility work could potentially benefit those learners, too. Before I start creating my online learning materials I am going to contact the disability and accessibility specialists at my institution to ask if they have any guidance documents, and maybe to ask if they would look at my materials when I have created them, to see if they can spot any obvious accessibility issues. I would not have had the confidence to do that before, but now I feel that I know enough to make my materials pretty accessible and then they can help me improve them even more. Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript SARAH:

Today I want to share with you two ways that my teaching has changed since I moved so much of my work online. The first thing I want to talk about is really purely a new tool I use, and that is video. Just as I'm talking to you today, I make these little videos quite regularly to use with my students. I use them always if I'm meeting and greeting a new group. And I find it really helpful, because it makes coming to a new class considerably less intimidating if you have met your new teacher and you can picture what they look like. So for that reason, I do that every single time I have a new class. I also use it more generally just to mix things up a little bit. If I want to read for some points or I want to summarise a class, I will often speak directly to the camera very casually, like I'm just now, complete with errors in the system. But at least it means I'm talking to my pupils in their own home, and I think it just adds a different dimension to my teaching. The second thing that's changed with my teaching online, I think, is that I am actually much more organised, organised in the sense of classroom

management. I'm aware that I need to constantly check that my students are on the right page, or that they're using the right book, that they have understood what I've just said, that they understand what their homework is. Because I don't have the visual cues of speaking to a class, I'm checking all these things much more regularly. And actually, that is really helpful for lots of different students. Specifically, for somebody, for example, that's got ADHD it keeps them on track. It keeps them in the right place within the lesson. But more generally, it just keeps bringing people back. And I'm not making any assumptions about what I think people understand. And rather, I'm creating almost more of a dialogue. You would think that working online using microphones and software would create less of a dialogue, but in that sense, for me, the way that I have fundamentally had to change my teaching I think has opened up more of a dialogue, and I retain this conversation almost constantly with my classes now and check that everybody is still with me. So that is quite a- it is a fundamental change, really, in the way I teach. And I find now that when I do teach face to face, that the techniques that I have used in that respect go with me.

So two very different things, but two ways that I think my teaching has changed quite dramatically with the work that I've been doing online. Thank you. Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript RITA

OK. This is the exciting stage. I think that I now have everything I need to try something. I have identified which elements of the existing classroombased course that I want to retain, which I will change or adapt, and which learning outcomes that I want my learners to meet in a new way in the online environment. With these new materials I will go back to my usual processes for designing learning materials and use my learning design knowledge to ensure the pedagogy underpins what I’m doing. Only then will I allow myself to start getting excited about technologies, media and Open Educational Resources! I am going to start work on preparing my online teaching materials, and I will hope to see you when I have produced something. [CLOCK TICKING] Hello again. I am glad you are still there. I have been working for quite some time, but I think I have a first draft of my online teaching materials ready. I built a framework using my redesigned learning outcomes, and I slotted into it items that would repurpose from my existing classroom materials.

Some of my classroom materials needed a bit of revision, for example making PowerPoints more meaningful and accessible to stand on their own. Once I had identified where there were gaps I started looking through all of the OER material I had downloaded from the repositories. When I started looking through it, some of it was immediately rejected due to being the wrong level, not sufficiently accessible, or using teaching techniques that I don’t think are ideal for my learners. But I did find some wonderful materials too, and with a bit of adjustment to make them suit my purpose, I filled up most of the gaps in my course that way. Finally, I had to create a few items from scratch as I could find nothing that would do the job. But now I am ready to ask my friends and my accessibility colleagues to look at it and give me feedback. I’m nervous about what they will say, but I am happy to have got this far now. Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript SARAH:

Evaluating the effectiveness of my online teaching. As a nurse, the biggest tool that I use for evaluating any of my practise is reflection. And I use a physical reflective diary, especially when I'm on a course or I'm engaging in new practise. I have recently set up a blog. So this can be used for a more modern reflective journal. And it also will mean I can collect ideas and state ideas and get feedback online, which is something I've recently developed using Twitter and Facebook, for example. When preparing my teaching, I always include an activity that will enable me to have feedback on my teaching- be that in the classroom, synchronistically online, or as part of blended learning. And I ask the students to, perhaps, consider what they've learned so I can see whether they've picked up on the key elements of the activity or ask them to evaluate what they would rather change, what they didn't like, which is always useful. I also ask for peers to give me feedback, either by supporting me with an online tutorial or by reviewing my learning resources, which is very useful for nursing because we revalidate every three years.

Although some survey tools are useful, I also use online quizzes, for example, and started to use Kahoot, for example, which the students have given a lot of positive feedback around. They find it fun, but it also enables me to see if they've done preparation for the session. Exploring the learning environment and the Virtual Learning Environment, the VLE, I've also explored what tools are available for that. And I've started to engage with learning analytics. Learning analytics is a term used to define online sources of information that can provide information about student progression and for administration. So an example of that might be that we set a quiz for our nursing students each week- and it can either be one that you can do over and over again or one that's a one-off- so we can see how well they're faring. By setting up the tracking, we can then see whether students are engaging in the first place and how well they're doing. And that then enables us to increase the effectiveness of our teaching by creating new learning activities for students that perhaps are struggling. So all in all, there's quite a wide range of evaluating learning. Back

Uncaptioned interactive content Transcript [TEXT ON SCREEN: FOUR MONTHS LATER] RITA

Hello again. It has been several months since I saw you –- I hope you’re doing ok. So, after I created the first draft of my online course I got some useful feedback from my colleagues. I made some changes to my materials as a result of their comments, and the accessibility specialists gave me all sorts of resources and tips for making my course accessible, which was a fantastic help. Finally, I was ready to use it with a cohort of learners. The learners very much appreciated not having to come to class, and they found the ‘Flipped Learning’ approach quite refreshing. Comments about my materials were mixed, but generally positive. Because this was my first attempt, I asked the learners to give me general feedback in a questionnaire, and then I asked eight of them to help me by doing a short interview with me. I ranked the questionnaire responses in terms of who was the most positive overall, and interviewed two at the top of the ranking, two at the bottom, and four more at stages in between. The

interviews were only ten minutes each because the learners were giving me their time and I didn’t want to burden them with a long interview. They gave me some very useful feedback about what they liked, what they didn’t like, and even what they would like me to include for future learners. One student, whom I think may be dyslexic, gave me some very interesting insights into how he perceived my learning materials. Although he struggled with a few items, overall he found the online nature of the course far more useful to him than the classroom environment and he said it ‘brought out the best in him and made him want to try to succeed’. I had to try not to cry! Thanks to the feedback from my learners, I know how to improve the course for next time, and I will also look for more OERs that I could incorporate. I am so pleased I took the OpenLearn course. It certainly was not easy, but I learned so much and it really gave me the confidence to move into online teaching. I am still a long way from being an expert, but I have started on my journey. In fact, I am looking into options for further study with The Open University on the subject of online learning – this might give me the opportunity to work with expert tutors and join a community of educators, all learning together how to improve our online teaching practice. I think it might

help me continue my development as an online teacher and perhaps enable me to move fully into online teaching. Thank you for working alongside me through this course. I hope it has helped you as much as it has helped me. My best wishes for whatever you do next - maybe I will get to talk to some of you online – we could be study buddies! But for now it is a fond farewell from me. Goodbye! Back