what course: Automotive Service Technician and Automotive Collision Repair; part of ITA Flexible learning plan - increase the number of apprentices in all trades; reduce barriers; improve learning and access
context: 80% theory 20% practice - want to offer more learning online ( 120 hrs online and 90 hours f2f)
why: to reduce time away from work and develop model to integrate industry/instit/apprentice
Online course: 180 hours over 3 months; lots of content (use tabs); using Moodle
Students don't like to read alot in trades; contextualizing reading important and make content not so overwhelming
integrate audio; Instructor intro (audio file)
Lots of interactivity/ hands-on with the content; Lots of direction "now do this..."
Scheduled meetings - give students a sense of the course; provide structure; keep them motivated; streamline things for them;
Expected workplace activity: tasks they can do at their workplace
Challenges:student profile; student are working; many living in outer lying areas; don't like reading; kinestheic learning preference/doing
How do you manage workload when you have responses that are based on audio;
*Scanning audio is hard; transcript would be; great but need tool to capture
* Wimba recommended
Can instit develop an online showcase for courses? possible for this to be done?
* what would it take to put together a showcase? ; BCcampus is recording event today and will make screencasts/audio available
On reusable objects: struggle to get people to reuse and hard to find things as instructor that are adaptable
*sharing of online quiz questions
*Sharing code or what we do across instit. would make sense
*VCC willing to share screencasts of course
What advantages of using LMS and how much can you stretch or not stretch the LMS?
* D2L is used as is; no extending happening ; LMS meets most of their needs
* UBC extends their LMS as required; issue is how to support it - when you go outside you need to look at support for users
* all a tradeoff; if you want to extend the LMS but do the analysis first e.g. if the LMS changes or needs updating are you willing to make the necessary changes/adaptions
* VCC - depends on students - with their students low tolerance for extending; needs to be very structured for their busy students
* technology should support education not drive it ; we don't need to be bound by the LMS; if your context allows - go for it!
* accessibility issues with the LMS being worked on but use of web 2.0 and extended needs to be addressed; movement to accessible CSS and alt tags; there are screen readers and JAWS but tip from Neil Squire is to provide content in multiple formats rather than one format for everybody
* key thing is also how big is the class: "control" for course ; workload: watch out for things continually added and added but not subtracted
* while we are designing for LMS and looking beyond that and designing for the world not just North America
* LMS is prohibitive for many people (developing countries) - develop open content
* develop faculty with "digital acuity" and ability to move from one tool to another not expending energies on the LMS and tool
* Should we not develop content that is portable and not dependent on any one LMS?
* Applied educaton at the JIBC; Note: all our students and context for learning different
* It is about our similarities and our differences - Excellent showcase of our online courses