From platforms to postcards, what’s the pedagogy?

Some suggestions from Mark Ingham to help you think about, plan and deliver your online courses and resources. Post you own suggestions below!

Reading

…and the Russians used a pencil (short read)
https://bit.ly/2WrQM4x
Useful blog by James Clay about not using too much bandwidth and not trying to copy what we do in the studio and put it online.

You can use high tech tools that require decent technology and bandwidth, but sometimes you can make do with a pencil.

It helps explain some of the pitfalls of relying too heavily on platforms that will take up bandwidth and lead to buffering and crashing.

Videoconferencing Alternatives: How Low-Bandwidth Teaching Will Save Us All (short read)
https://bit.ly/3bfw23U
This iddblog by Daniel Stanford has been used a lot recently about the dangers of going straight for video conferencing before using other less draining technologies. In his conclusion he argues that:

I like to encourage faculty to start their online-course design process by imagining how they’d structure each week’s assignments and activities using only the tools in the green zone.

SEDA – Responding to Coronavirus (Medium read)
https://bit.ly/2UsspRs
Gives a comprehensive list of resources and links that are already out there that is being created online by interested parties on a Google doc. Saves us from having to compile one ourselves.

Your Suddenly Online Class Could Actually Be a Relief (short read)
https://bit.ly/395j8UV
A guest post on Inside Higher Ed blog that aims ‘…to help those who need to go online take a breather and orient around what’s most important.’ Gives really good advice about how to stay mentally and physically healthy while teaching online.

Active Learning: Engaging Students To Maximize Learning In An Online Course (long read)
https://bit.ly/33yRrT7
An academic paper by Arshia Khan, Ona Egbue, Brooke Palkie, and Janna Madden which details some of the ways you can help engage students in online courses. Point 6, Creating a Community of Learning is:

One of the most important components of online learning is to provide a forum for the development of a community. It is very important to have a statement of clear expectations of the students and the instructor at the beginning of the course (p. 110)

How to Be a Better Online Teacher ADVICE GUIDE By Flower Darby (short read)
https://bit.ly/3a9xiWj
Some really useful advice about how to be online and how to organise the materials the student will be asked to use during the course:

The design and sequence of content and learning activities in both realms should be methodical, systematic, and purposeful.

Two courses to dip into

Get started with online learning + Creating open educational resources (short, medium and long)
https://bit.ly/3boCO7V(you have to register to access the site, but it is free and easy to do)
These are just two of the courses on the Open University’s OpenLearn free learning site.

I have just completed the Take Your Teaching Online course which gave a very clear account of how to create a successful course online. It says it takes 24 hours over 8 weeks but you can go at your own pace and takes much less time than this. I did it in one day over about 6 hours, passed the quizzes and got a badge! If you search for an online course you will get a number of courses you might want to try out.

Any more?

If you’d like to share resources with collaegues you can add them in a comment below.